Oh, I don't have a problem with copyrights surviving an author. What I'm saying is that even if they do, they will almost always fail to actually help to support the author's family because copyrights usually are not worth much money, and if they are, usually aren't for very long (maybe a year or two if you're very lucky).
If an author is concerned about the well being of his survivors, he ought to ignore the temptation of just leaving behind his copyrights. Instead, he should behave like any ordinary person would: he should get life insurance, he should save and invest wisely, he should support public welfare programs, etc. And it's good to push authors in this direction; not only for actually helping them and their families, but also because everyone has this problem, and it's stupid to set up a system that is for authors only (unusually successful authors, I'd like to point out), rather than a system everyone can participate in.
As for copyright terms, the best solution IMO is to grant minimal, short-lived protection automatically, merely to deter manuscript piracy. Proper copyrights should require registration, and the terms should be simple terms of years, and very short, with a relatively small number of renewals allowed. Requiring these formalities is a trivial burden to an author, but helps the rest of the public immensely in knowing what is and isn't protected, and to be able to plan for how to use works when they hit the public domain at predictable times.
Also, you're slightly mistaken about the purpose of copyright. It is to promote the progress of science. Encouraging authors is but a means to an end, and further, since copyright just cares about quantity, not quality, it's meant to encourage not only authors who might actually make money from copyrights,but also the ones that don't. Copyright deliberately exploits their unrealistic optimism. Indeed, sufficiently rational authors might very well not respond to the most incentive they could reasonably be offered, and end up being left out.
As for heirs of copies not being able to lawfully reproduce the relevant works in more copies, well, that has more to do with the scope of copyright; we could easily amend copyright to not prohibit the making of more copies in such circumstances, and to void the relevant parts of existing adhesive licenses, and we probably should (as part of more significant reforms).
Well, given how little copyright related economic clue there is to most copyrightable works, and how short lived it usually is if there is any at all, relying on copyrights to provide for one's heirs is about as irresponsible as relying on a big box full of lottery tickets to provide for them instead.
We really should not encourage this. It's bad for the families of authors, and it's bad for the rest of society.
Well, in US copyright law, fair use has to be decided on a case by case basis. Just because a work is a parody or satire does not automatically make it a fair use. There is a four prong test that's usually used for fair use decisions; you can see it at 17 USC 107.
Interestingly, when plaintiffs proposed jury instructions on calculating the damages, they were flawed in such a way that the jury might mistakenly inflate the amount of the award. Tenenbaum's lawyers were really never on their game the whole way through, and as is typical, failed to object at the time. (Of course, a bunch of us in the gallery noticed immediately, and there was a good bit of whispering going on)
The award is an even multiple of the minimum possible award, which suggests that the jury very well may have misunderstood what they were supposed to do. I've no idea if this was deliberate on the part of plaintiffs, or if they also misread the law, but I wouldn't put it past them.
Because he did not just download MP3s, he also uploaded them. If all he did was download the MP3s, then yes, the damages should be in a similar range to the cost of an MP3.
No. The law does not distinguish between uploading and downloading for the purposes of calculating statutory damages. In the case of willful infringement, damages can be in the range of $750 to $150,000 per work, as the court finds just.
So had he just downloaded, the damages certainly would not be in a similar range to the cost of a legal download, and depending on the jury, could be less than, the same as, or greater than, the award in this case.
Also, note that the issue here are damages; the price of a distribution license is not particularly relevant, as it doesn't inform us about how much harm the copyright holder suffered. It would be better to determine how many people downloaded from Tenenbaum rather than obtaining music from a legitimate source, and use that to compute the actual harm suffered. Statutory damages exist because actual damages may be too difficult to work out. But neither sort of damages are meant to extract whatever amount the plaintiff wants from the defendant.
No problem: there's no civil right to not be taxed at all, in a general way, so no rights are lost, no labor is being compelled from anyone, and there's no inherent right to property that is likely to be infringed upon by the sorts of taxes that are usually instituted.
So all we really have are greedy people who want their cake and to eat it too, but disguise themselves in nobler sounding language.
Out of curiosity, what would you like to see as the replacement? Unicameral legislature? Westminster system? Modifying the states (eg breaking them up into smaller, more managable units)? Sortition? Civil law judiciary? I mean, I don't see the point in wanting to dissolve the government unless you've thought about the form of its successor.
Yes, and a state-led constitutional convention of that type has only happened once, with the result being that the state delegates immediately decided to scrap the previous US government and replace it with an entirely new one. I'd be careful about what you wish for.
Second, yes, we can fully expect books to be written by people who have some other job that pays the bills.
And that's a sustainable model how? How about software? That doesn't even make sense for books.
It's sustainable because the authors are making money at their regular jobs, and so while it's nice to make money from their books, it's not a life-or-death thing. Which is good, because in most cases, they will fail to do so. It's pretty rare to have a work that can be exploited for enough to even recoup your costs and best alternative. Douglas Adams worked as a bodyguard for a while when his writing career was in a slump, and was reportedly on the verge of moving to Hong Kong to be a shipbroker just before he finally managed to get commissioned to write The Hitchhiker's Guide. Stephen King worked in a laundry, and later on as a teacher while he was writing, until he became successful enough to go pro. William Carlos Williams was a doctor, and he continued to practice even after he became successful; he did his writing at night, after work. Kurt Vonnegut sold cars for a while after his first book was published. And jumping outside of the world of writing, Steve Wozniak worked his regular day job at Hewlett Packard's calculator division for almost a year after starting Apple, because he didn't think that it would be a good career move to quit. Finally Mike Markkula, an early investor, demanded that Woz had to quit HP or he wouldn't invest (which was basically necessary to get the Apple II going and grow the company out of the garage), so Woz decided to stay at HP. It ultimately took Steve hounding Woz (both personally and through proxies) to get Woz to take a chance on Apple.
These guys all eventually made it big; now imagine how many people are out there who are writers who have simply never become successful. Day jobs are important. Until you're certain that you can make it in your new career, and unless you've got someone else who is willing to pay the bills, you'd really better have one. And this is such practical advice, and the need for at least some money is so acute and universal, that it's an incredibly common practice.
Copyright actually started much earlier than 1710, it just started in 1710 in the UK using english words.
Where, exactly? Got a cite? I hope it's more than a king granting privileges (or not, as his whim dictates) to a handful of guys.
People make their entire living writing copywritten works, (musicians, authors, journalists, software developers) all of those things are protected by copyright and all of those things came into full force with both the creation of copyright and the proliferation of education so people could you know, read.
Some people do -- you'd be surprised how few people there are who actually need copyrights to get by. And certainly musicians were around before music was copyrightable (In the US, 1831 in the form of sheet music, a mishmash of state statutes and common law judicial opinions for sound recordings until the federal government finally started granting copyrights for them in 1972), as were authors (the Epic of Gilgamesh is almost four thousand years old and surely wasn't the first story ever in history, just one of the oldest ones to survive to the present), and journalists (for printed periodicals they date back to the 15th-16th century). Software does not predate copyright, but it did take some time before anyone in the field really began to feel as though copyright was even a factor. AFAIK that didn't happen until the 70s with the rise of microcomputers; plenty of software was written and shared before anyone thought better of it though, not least of which were games like Spacewar! and Adventure, which basically spread everywhere.
Everyone has an inherent right of free speech
Rights are artificial constructs as much as anything else in the legal sy
The copy is the license (at least up until the late 80s or so). Books are a copy of copyrighted material and a license, all in one.
No, there's no license at all.
A license is a contractual or equitable agreement by the licensor to not sue the licensee for doing things pursuant to the license. This requires that if not for the license, the licensor could potentially sue the licensee.
With regard to books, the buyer of a particular copy of a book has a free speech right to do anything he likes with the contents of the book, and a property right to do anything he likes with the book as a physical object. There may be legal restrictions on these rights: If there is an applicable copyright, this may limit certain aspects of his free speech right, e.g. prohibiting him from making another copy of the book. However, copyright only consists of a few specific, enumerated exclusive rights; the right to use a book, or read a book, or access a book is not one of them.
Thus there cannot be a copyright license governing the use of a book, because copyright does not apply to 'use' and the copyright holder cannot license rights that he doesn't have control over.
This doesn't prohibit the possibility of a use license as part of the sale of the book as a physical object, just as I could sell someone a piece of land subject to the condition that they were not allowed to build a high-rise building on, for example. However, a restriction on use would never be implied from an otherwise ordinary sale. It would be very, very clearly spelled out. While it is possible that a few books are sold subject to restrictions (which have nothing to do with copyright; you could be the owner of a used or public domain book and still do this, since it's to do with the physical object and not the intangible creative work), I can't say that I've ever seen such a thing on an ordinary book in an ordinary bookstore.
Books may include some boilerplate language like such:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
But this is basically 1) An anachronistic statement needed to assert copyright, dating back to the 1910 Buenos Aires Convention, and which is really utterly pointless now; and 2) A quick restatement of some copyright law, but by no means a condition of sale that must be accepted by the buyer, and where the book must be returned if this is not acceptable.
The idea that copyright licenses are particularly commonplace is derived from the computer industry, and it's a bad idea that causes all sorts of misconceptions.
Moore's law applies to transistor-based storage, like SSDs. Magnetic storage would be Kryder's law, although it's not expected to continue to make accurate predictions for too much longer.
Still, I remember when 140kiB floppy disks were all the rage, so it's been one hell of a ride so far.
as for me the ownership of physical property does not seem necessarily innate either.
They're the same, as it happens; both are utilitarian.
Your right to own property is basically limited to 1) what you personally can defend from others, 2) what other people agree that you own, and 3) what other people will cooperate with you to defend from others.
I can claim to own the Brooklyn Bridge, but if I can't enforce that claim myself, and no one else recognizes it or helps me enforce it, I really don't.
Why would people agree to respect or defend someone else's property? Basically so that they'll enjoy reciprocal treatment.
society generally accepts that a work of art, or piece of software, is somehow owned by the creator, perhaps as a reflection of their intellect or soul that took effort to construct.
Oh? I think that society generally agrees that if anyone should initially have a claim on it, it would be the creator, as opposed to an unrelated third party (e.g. the old model, where the rights went to the publisher, not the author). But that doesn't mean that people widely agree that there should be any exclusive rights to the work, at least not enforceable against the public at large. By all means, let there be exclusive rights that can be enforced against someone else, but that's no reason to have them enforced against us; that strikes me as a much more typical opinion.
Also, n.b. that in the US at least, the Constitution specifically prohibits granting copyrights on the basis that the author expended labor to create the work.
We have no problem with the owner of a successful business making millions by providing value to many members of society, and collating the profits of that value for themselves
Plenty of people do. I'm all in favor of increasingly progressive income and wealth / property taxes, mandatory socially-useful investments, etc.. I've got no problem with people being successful and making millions of dollars. But the utility of additional money declines pretty rapidly as you go above the middle class, and I'd rather see the money used where it can do some good, rather than at best idling, and more likely accumulating and enabling mischievous and outright malicious behavior by the rich.
I think there is something natural about IP ownership.
First, invoking 'IP' is not useful here. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, publicity rights, etc. are all very different, with different histories and justifications and laws. There's basically no way to conflate them all into one thing and still talk about them in any kind of sensible way. Let's stick to copyright only.
Second, how do you reconcile the natural right of free speech -- inclusive of the right to repeat verbatim what someone else has already said -- with a supposed natural right of copyright -- which is a right to prohibit people from saying things merely because someone else has said them first? AFAICT it cannot be done. Please feel free to take a stab at it.
However if IP is unownable then complaints about labels are silly as they really did the bulk of the work.
Certain complaints about publishers are silly regardless. They frequently do a lot of the work, and I have no problem with authors making bad deals that give most of the profits (if there are any) to publishers. Authors aren't children, are engaged in business, and don't need to be protected from such things. It's a serious business, and they need to behave seriously to avoid being exploited. Or else what's next? We say that authors don't have to pay taxes because they're too irresponsible with their finances to have that expected of them?
Where the hell was copyright -- authorial copyright, not stationer's copyright or outright censorship -- in existence since the 15th century?
There's a reason why everyone basically starts with the Statute of Anne: Things called copyright prior to that were really just systems of official censorship and trade monopolies. They weren't anything like copyright as we think of it now, and aren't really worth mentioning.
Making a copy of a book costs next to nothing compared to the cost of writing the first copy, but we still want there to be authors, and you can't expect book to be published solely by people who have some other job that pays the bills.
First, technically, what we want is for there to be newly created original, creative works. I don't care if authors produce them or if they magically fall out of the sky (or more likely, are eventually produced by computer programs that take a random number as an input and generate a ripping good yarn as output). Even if we only develop tools that assist authors, this can be pretty good, as it reduces the number of author-hours needed to create a work, and either 1) results in the same quantity of works for less cost, allowing us to reduce copyright etc. accordingly, or 2) increases the quantity of works at the same cost, which reduces the amount of protection that each work enjoys, letting authors try to make it up in volume. We've seen an early example of this with painting largely being replaced by photography and photography being supplemented with computers. But we're getting off-topic.
Second, yes, we can fully expect books to be written by people who have some other job that pays the bills. Most authors of any sort do not make a living from copyright-related revenue from their work. And prior to the invention of copyright in 1710, and then only in England (it spread only a little in the 18th century, and mostly in the 19th century, largely thanks to colonialism) all authors needed real jobs or ways of making money from their works that didn't rely on copyrights. And it worked -- they created and published a lot of works. And it still works, as your typical musician, or literary author, or visual artist, or whatever, has a real job that pays the bills.
Copyright holds the promise of incentivizing authors to create yet more works, but if we were to abolish it tomorrow, works would still be created and published. The issue is mainly one of value for money; we want to grant the least amount of copyright (in both the scope of protection and the length in time it persists) which yields the most amount of works that otherwise would not have been created and published.
Tyranny of the masses and all that.
Copyright is inherently tyranny of the masses. It can't be avoided. Everyone has an inherent right of free speech which includes the right to repeat verbatim what someone else has said. This is why I can go out and stand on the street corner and recite Shakespeare; there's no law saying that I can, just a law saying that my pre-existing right to do so is recognized and will not be infringed upon.
When we grant copyright, we are censoring everyone -- telling them that they may not exercise their right as to certain works -- for what is perceived to be a benefit to society -- that more original, creative works will be created and published than otherwise would be, and that this, even after the harm caused by censoring people, is a net benefit to society. It is nothing more than the masses telling those who disagree that their right of free speech is nevertheless curtailed, and they must fall into line for the benefit of all.
Altering the specifics is no more tyrannical. Copyright was never intended to benefit authors any more than a better variety of hay was intended to benefit cows; copyright is intended to benefit society as a whole, just as the hay is meant to benefit the farmer, who gets more milk to sell at market. You're confusing the means with the ends.
Personally, I think that copyright can provide a net public benefit, and that it's worthwhile to society to have some kind of copyright, though it would be rather different, and likely much reduced from what we have now (which does not appear to provide more of a benefit than a detriment, and certainly does not appear to maximize the net public benefit). But it is entirely possible that circumstances will change such that no amou
Even if you do, it can be difficult. A few years ago, Japan had a program offering to pay dekasegi (Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry who moved to Japan) to leave Japan, go back to Brazil, or Peru, or wherever, and permanently give up their visas. I don't know if it's still going on.
the only question is what stimulates artists to create.
Indeed. Term lengths dramatically increased in 1978 due to the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act. Why then did we not see a surge of creative works created and published which, but for the term extension, would not have been? AFAICT advances in technology and societal changes are responsible for the increase in the quantity of creative works created and published since then, which presumably would've happened anyway.
Beyond a fairly short period of time, I don't think that it actually does stimulate authors. Some particularly irrational authors may think that it does, but I'd bet good money that if we reduced the term lengths dramatically, they would not quit creating works and go work at a real job instead. Copyright relies on manipulating authors to work for little actual reward, urged on by mirages. That's fine, but I don't think that it takes so much to get them to do it; they're easy marks and we don't have to try so hard.
Rather, long terms are specifically designed to help already-established authors and publishers, neither of whom need it.
Remember, creative works are like the lottery: there are many works, but the vast majority have no copyright-related value ever. Of the remainder, a tiny few have some copyright-related value, but usually not too much, and not for too long. The timeframe differs depending on the type of work (a daily newspaper is worthless in less than 24 hours, a decent movie usually has a few years) but in general it's astonishingly rare to have a work that is still got copyright-related value about 10-15 years after it was first released. Creating one of those works is like winning the lottery.
If someone other than an author wanted to provide for his family after he died, which would you suggest: a big pile of scratch off tickets, or sensible savings, investments, life insurance policies, social welfare system, etc.?
Plus, it's typical for works with long term copyright revenue to start out making a lot of money, so where did it go? If the author squandered it all, why are we giving him even more copyright to save him from his own mistake?
Basically, because long terms are of no use for almost everyone, and usually only help people who don't need the help, what you're really suggesting is that we set up a special welfare system for authors that helps the rich at public expense, while encouraging the poor and middle class to behave irresponsibly.
You can start being ashamed of yourself anytime.
The better solution is to have copyrights last for a fixed term of years from the first publication or release of the work. There might be optional renewal terms, but these too would be fixed in number and duration. The maximum possible term length would be known from day one. This allows for planning early on. In addition, since we can't order that works have copyright related revenue, we set up general purpose social welfare programs that help out anyone in need (not just authors), and encourage people to save and invest carefully, take out life insurance, etc. Do it as part of a home ec or personal finances class in high school, college, and as adult education. And regulate the banks to make sure that the system isnt just a scam. And again, this helps everyone, not just authors.
The widows and orphans argument for copyright terms is bunk and always was.
Ah, that's it; I had only been thinking of the functional elements.
Yes, in that case I'd agree with you that games are probably best protected by utility patents for the working bits and design patents for the ornamental elements (so as to avoid the utility doctrine in copyright and other rules that could result in a loss of protection), with a smattering of copyright for the expression of instructions, and for art that's clearly separable from useful material, and at least for the duration of the core patents, a trademark on the name. If the game is a computer game, I'd prefer there not be software utility patents, but copyright could cover some of the code itself.
(Oh, and copyrights are worldwide... this judge has effectively granted the author a game a world-wide patent upon it. Let the games begin!)
No they're not. Copyrights are national, there's just a system of reciprocity in granting them nationally. Remember the thing with Amazon and 1984? That happened because the book was in the public domain in Australia, and copyrighted in the US, due to national differences in copyright law.
And anyway, copyrights are not patent substitutes. Although this opinion certainly tries to make for one; it's pretty badly done.
If Tetris was such a simple concept that it shouldn't deserve copyright protection, then why would official Tetris be so much more popular than profitable than not-quite-Tetris?
Branding.
Anyone can make playing cards, but some brands of playing cards (e.g. Bicycle) remain popular. There are probably people who swear by dice (an ancient gaming invention) made by one manufacturer over another even when there's no discernible difference. Going a little further afield, anyone can make blue jeans, but people keep Levi's in business.
Of course, then there's a whole 'nother argument as to whether or not there is a protectable TETRIS trademark. (I would say that there is not, per the Shredded Wheat case, but it requires evidence that I don't feel like gathering at great expense)
Tetris is more than just a "set of polygons that can be constructed out of 4 congruent squares,"
Yes. Tetris is:
A playing field taller than it is wide, preferably 10 blocks wide by 20 blocks high, though it can vary.
Into which tetrominos fall from the top, one at a time, moving down, at varying rates according to the difficulty of the game and player inputs. Where all possible tetrominos are employed. Where the player can rotate or drop the tetrominos at will until they come to rest against a surface, either the bottom of the field or an already-resting tetromino.
If a complete horizontal line of tetrominos is formed by the player, the line disappears, increasing the score.
And optionally, pre-filled garbage blocks in the field to increase difficulty.
And optionally, a display of the next piece to be dropped into the field.
And optionally, where the active and next pieces (and perhaps other pieces) are different colors, each color uniquely corresponding to the shape of the tetromino, to aid in player recognition of the piece.
I think that about covers it, though I may have forgotten something. It's really no different from going through the rules that define baseball -- the ball has to meet certain requirements, the field has to be certain dimensions, the play works in a particular way, etc. You can change things, but the more you change, the more different the game is, like the effect of the designated hitter rule. Eventually you end up with a different game altogether, albeit still related, much like how softball or rounders are similar to baseball, but not baseball.
If none of this were true, no one would bother trying to make exact copies of Tetris such as Mino, and people wouldn't get all flustered trying to argue such copies should be legal.
It's a popular game, and since the game -- as distinguished from a particular program implementing the game -- is wholly unprotected in the US at least, why shouldn't people want to cash in on it? Any idiot can build a billiards table and sell it. This is the same type of thing.
People are arguing it is legal because it is legal and it is rather silly to argue otherwise. Things would be different if tetris had been patented, but that never happened. Copyright is not an acceptable substitute, however.
Why design patents? Surely the rules of a game are a method of operation for playing the game. Unless games aren't useful, a regular utility patent would seem to be a better choice to me. The 'tap' patent from the Magic card game is a utility patent, but that's the only game rule patent I know of.
Now, there very well may be some people who create something and live off it for the rest of their lives without creating another thing. So what? If someone creates something so wonderful/critical/popular that it still generates income 50 years later why shouldn't they benefit from that? What if that work was the only idea they had? Shortening copyright sure isn't going to make them come up with another idea. What if they didn't really enjoy the process of creating that work, or found it too demanding to do so - how is a shorter copyright going to help that? Do you think that somehow people who create things are incapable of ever doing anything else, so by limiting copyright you will somehow force them to create more? Furthermore, what if they created that work that everyone just has to have solely for the purpose of living off it for the rest of their life? Would the world be better off not having that work at all?
I don't care about any of that except the bit at the end. The idea, boiled down a lot, is to 'pay' in terms of granting copyright protection, as little as possible while still getting the work. If the author would have created the work in exchange for a 5 year term, granting anything beyond that is wasteful and incurs a needless cost at public expense. There are ways to tailor copyright terms to try to minimize the amount granted while still being enough to incentivize the author into creating and publishing it when he otherwise wouldn't. We no longer employ any of those techniques, the system is so screwed up.
Copyright isn't meant to be welfare for authors. First, most copyrights are worthless, and most of the remainder are worthless after a very short time. You might as well give poor people lottery tickets instead of food stamps. Second, it's unfair, since it privileges authors instead of other people who need welfare. If you just want to help them out, keep copyright terms as short as possible, and protections as limited in scope as possible, while still getting the works we want, and then have social welfare programs for food, housing, medical care, etc. which any poor person can take advantage of.
Lastly, they did not stop anyone from writing a similar game. There are loads of games 'similar' to Tetris (PopIt, etc). Of course, those games actually required some innovation, so as to not be direct copies of Tetris. They stopped someone from making the SAME game. The clone game is not innovative in the least, and contributes absolutely nothing to society.
Copyright doesn't protect game rules or gameplay. Only patents can do that, and there is no tetris patent. The cloners were within their rights to copy the underlying game exactly. Whether they innovate or not is irrelevant. Whether it contributes to society is irrelevant. The only thing they can't copy are things which are not part of the underlying game of tetris, and which are creative and copyrightable. AFAICT they did infringe a little, but not as much as the court here thinks; having read the opinion, I think the court seriously misunderstood and misapplied the law.
Wrong. Copyright's intention is to SPUR innovation. It does that by telling people 'if you invent something, it is yours. We will prevent others from doing the same thing for a period of time'.
No. Copyright's purpose is to encourage the creation and publication of certain creative works, which otherwise would not have been created and published, while causing no or minimal harm to the public due to restrictions on the use of said works, such that the net benefit to the public is greater than if there were no copyright.
It's got nothing to do with innovation. Creative works need to be original and creative, not innovative. Dull-as-dishwater works which, while possessing a modicum of creativity, do not innovate anything at all, are perfectly eligible for copyright. And it's got nothing to do with invention; that's patents. And you haven't explained patents either. It's basically about quantity: More is better if the cost imposed on society isn't too high.
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Oh, I don't have a problem with copyrights surviving an author. What I'm saying is that even if they do, they will almost always fail to actually help to support the author's family because copyrights usually are not worth much money, and if they are, usually aren't for very long (maybe a year or two if you're very lucky).
If an author is concerned about the well being of his survivors, he ought to ignore the temptation of just leaving behind his copyrights. Instead, he should behave like any ordinary person would: he should get life insurance, he should save and invest wisely, he should support public welfare programs, etc. And it's good to push authors in this direction; not only for actually helping them and their families, but also because everyone has this problem, and it's stupid to set up a system that is for authors only (unusually successful authors, I'd like to point out), rather than a system everyone can participate in.
As for copyright terms, the best solution IMO is to grant minimal, short-lived protection automatically, merely to deter manuscript piracy. Proper copyrights should require registration, and the terms should be simple terms of years, and very short, with a relatively small number of renewals allowed. Requiring these formalities is a trivial burden to an author, but helps the rest of the public immensely in knowing what is and isn't protected, and to be able to plan for how to use works when they hit the public domain at predictable times.
Also, you're slightly mistaken about the purpose of copyright. It is to promote the progress of science. Encouraging authors is but a means to an end, and further, since copyright just cares about quantity, not quality, it's meant to encourage not only authors who might actually make money from copyrights,but also the ones that don't. Copyright deliberately exploits their unrealistic optimism. Indeed, sufficiently rational authors might very well not respond to the most incentive they could reasonably be offered, and end up being left out.
As for heirs of copies not being able to lawfully reproduce the relevant works in more copies, well, that has more to do with the scope of copyright; we could easily amend copyright to not prohibit the making of more copies in such circumstances, and to void the relevant parts of existing adhesive licenses, and we probably should (as part of more significant reforms).
Well, given how little copyright related economic clue there is to most copyrightable works, and how short lived it usually is if there is any at all, relying on copyrights to provide for one's heirs is about as irresponsible as relying on a big box full of lottery tickets to provide for them instead.
We really should not encourage this. It's bad for the families of authors, and it's bad for the rest of society.
Well, in US copyright law, fair use has to be decided on a case by case basis. Just because a work is a parody or satire does not automatically make it a fair use. There is a four prong test that's usually used for fair use decisions; you can see it at 17 USC 107.
Interestingly, when plaintiffs proposed jury instructions on calculating the damages, they were flawed in such a way that the jury might mistakenly inflate the amount of the award. Tenenbaum's lawyers were really never on their game the whole way through, and as is typical, failed to object at the time. (Of course, a bunch of us in the gallery noticed immediately, and there was a good bit of whispering going on)
The award is an even multiple of the minimum possible award, which suggests that the jury very well may have misunderstood what they were supposed to do. I've no idea if this was deliberate on the part of plaintiffs, or if they also misread the law, but I wouldn't put it past them.
Because he did not just download MP3s, he also uploaded them. If all he did was download the MP3s, then yes, the damages should be in a similar range to the cost of an MP3.
No. The law does not distinguish between uploading and downloading for the purposes of calculating statutory damages. In the case of willful infringement, damages can be in the range of $750 to $150,000 per work, as the court finds just.
So had he just downloaded, the damages certainly would not be in a similar range to the cost of a legal download, and depending on the jury, could be less than, the same as, or greater than, the award in this case.
Also, note that the issue here are damages; the price of a distribution license is not particularly relevant, as it doesn't inform us about how much harm the copyright holder suffered. It would be better to determine how many people downloaded from Tenenbaum rather than obtaining music from a legitimate source, and use that to compute the actual harm suffered. Statutory damages exist because actual damages may be too difficult to work out. But neither sort of damages are meant to extract whatever amount the plaintiff wants from the defendant.
No problem: there's no civil right to not be taxed at all, in a general way, so no rights are lost, no labor is being compelled from anyone, and there's no inherent right to property that is likely to be infringed upon by the sorts of taxes that are usually instituted.
So all we really have are greedy people who want their cake and to eat it too, but disguise themselves in nobler sounding language.
Well, that's okay then; there aren't many libertarians, and we don't have to cater to them.
Out of curiosity, what would you like to see as the replacement? Unicameral legislature? Westminster system? Modifying the states (eg breaking them up into smaller, more managable units)? Sortition? Civil law judiciary? I mean, I don't see the point in wanting to dissolve the government unless you've thought about the form of its successor.
Yes, and a state-led constitutional convention of that type has only happened once, with the result being that the state delegates immediately decided to scrap the previous US government and replace it with an entirely new one. I'd be careful about what you wish for.
Second, yes, we can fully expect books to be written by people who have some other job that pays the bills.
And that's a sustainable model how? How about software? That doesn't even make sense for books.
It's sustainable because the authors are making money at their regular jobs, and so while it's nice to make money from their books, it's not a life-or-death thing. Which is good, because in most cases, they will fail to do so. It's pretty rare to have a work that can be exploited for enough to even recoup your costs and best alternative. Douglas Adams worked as a bodyguard for a while when his writing career was in a slump, and was reportedly on the verge of moving to Hong Kong to be a shipbroker just before he finally managed to get commissioned to write The Hitchhiker's Guide. Stephen King worked in a laundry, and later on as a teacher while he was writing, until he became successful enough to go pro. William Carlos Williams was a doctor, and he continued to practice even after he became successful; he did his writing at night, after work. Kurt Vonnegut sold cars for a while after his first book was published. And jumping outside of the world of writing, Steve Wozniak worked his regular day job at Hewlett Packard's calculator division for almost a year after starting Apple, because he didn't think that it would be a good career move to quit. Finally Mike Markkula, an early investor, demanded that Woz had to quit HP or he wouldn't invest (which was basically necessary to get the Apple II going and grow the company out of the garage), so Woz decided to stay at HP. It ultimately took Steve hounding Woz (both personally and through proxies) to get Woz to take a chance on Apple.
These guys all eventually made it big; now imagine how many people are out there who are writers who have simply never become successful. Day jobs are important. Until you're certain that you can make it in your new career, and unless you've got someone else who is willing to pay the bills, you'd really better have one. And this is such practical advice, and the need for at least some money is so acute and universal, that it's an incredibly common practice.
Copyright actually started much earlier than 1710, it just started in 1710 in the UK using english words.
Where, exactly? Got a cite? I hope it's more than a king granting privileges (or not, as his whim dictates) to a handful of guys.
People make their entire living writing copywritten works, (musicians, authors, journalists, software developers) all of those things are protected by copyright and all of those things came into full force with both the creation of copyright and the proliferation of education so people could you know, read.
Some people do -- you'd be surprised how few people there are who actually need copyrights to get by. And certainly musicians were around before music was copyrightable (In the US, 1831 in the form of sheet music, a mishmash of state statutes and common law judicial opinions for sound recordings until the federal government finally started granting copyrights for them in 1972), as were authors (the Epic of Gilgamesh is almost four thousand years old and surely wasn't the first story ever in history, just one of the oldest ones to survive to the present), and journalists (for printed periodicals they date back to the 15th-16th century). Software does not predate copyright, but it did take some time before anyone in the field really began to feel as though copyright was even a factor. AFAIK that didn't happen until the 70s with the rise of microcomputers; plenty of software was written and shared before anyone thought better of it though, not least of which were games like Spacewar! and Adventure, which basically spread everywhere.
Everyone has an inherent right of free speech
Rights are artificial constructs as much as anything else in the legal sy
The copy is the license (at least up until the late 80s or so). Books are a copy of copyrighted material and a license, all in one.
No, there's no license at all.
A license is a contractual or equitable agreement by the licensor to not sue the licensee for doing things pursuant to the license. This requires that if not for the license, the licensor could potentially sue the licensee.
With regard to books, the buyer of a particular copy of a book has a free speech right to do anything he likes with the contents of the book, and a property right to do anything he likes with the book as a physical object. There may be legal restrictions on these rights: If there is an applicable copyright, this may limit certain aspects of his free speech right, e.g. prohibiting him from making another copy of the book. However, copyright only consists of a few specific, enumerated exclusive rights; the right to use a book, or read a book, or access a book is not one of them.
Thus there cannot be a copyright license governing the use of a book, because copyright does not apply to 'use' and the copyright holder cannot license rights that he doesn't have control over.
This doesn't prohibit the possibility of a use license as part of the sale of the book as a physical object, just as I could sell someone a piece of land subject to the condition that they were not allowed to build a high-rise building on, for example. However, a restriction on use would never be implied from an otherwise ordinary sale. It would be very, very clearly spelled out. While it is possible that a few books are sold subject to restrictions (which have nothing to do with copyright; you could be the owner of a used or public domain book and still do this, since it's to do with the physical object and not the intangible creative work), I can't say that I've ever seen such a thing on an ordinary book in an ordinary bookstore.
Books may include some boilerplate language like such:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
But this is basically 1) An anachronistic statement needed to assert copyright, dating back to the 1910 Buenos Aires Convention, and which is really utterly pointless now; and 2) A quick restatement of some copyright law, but by no means a condition of sale that must be accepted by the buyer, and where the book must be returned if this is not acceptable.
The idea that copyright licenses are particularly commonplace is derived from the computer industry, and it's a bad idea that causes all sorts of misconceptions.
Moore's law applies to transistor-based storage, like SSDs. Magnetic storage would be Kryder's law, although it's not expected to continue to make accurate predictions for too much longer.
Still, I remember when 140kiB floppy disks were all the rage, so it's been one hell of a ride so far.
as for me the ownership of physical property does not seem necessarily innate either.
They're the same, as it happens; both are utilitarian.
Your right to own property is basically limited to 1) what you personally can defend from others, 2) what other people agree that you own, and 3) what other people will cooperate with you to defend from others.
I can claim to own the Brooklyn Bridge, but if I can't enforce that claim myself, and no one else recognizes it or helps me enforce it, I really don't.
Why would people agree to respect or defend someone else's property? Basically so that they'll enjoy reciprocal treatment.
society generally accepts that a work of art, or piece of software, is somehow owned by the creator, perhaps as a reflection of their intellect or soul that took effort to construct.
Oh? I think that society generally agrees that if anyone should initially have a claim on it, it would be the creator, as opposed to an unrelated third party (e.g. the old model, where the rights went to the publisher, not the author). But that doesn't mean that people widely agree that there should be any exclusive rights to the work, at least not enforceable against the public at large. By all means, let there be exclusive rights that can be enforced against someone else, but that's no reason to have them enforced against us; that strikes me as a much more typical opinion.
Also, n.b. that in the US at least, the Constitution specifically prohibits granting copyrights on the basis that the author expended labor to create the work.
We have no problem with the owner of a successful business making millions by providing value to many members of society, and collating the profits of that value for themselves
Plenty of people do. I'm all in favor of increasingly progressive income and wealth / property taxes, mandatory socially-useful investments, etc.. I've got no problem with people being successful and making millions of dollars. But the utility of additional money declines pretty rapidly as you go above the middle class, and I'd rather see the money used where it can do some good, rather than at best idling, and more likely accumulating and enabling mischievous and outright malicious behavior by the rich.
I think there is something natural about IP ownership.
First, invoking 'IP' is not useful here. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, publicity rights, etc. are all very different, with different histories and justifications and laws. There's basically no way to conflate them all into one thing and still talk about them in any kind of sensible way. Let's stick to copyright only.
Second, how do you reconcile the natural right of free speech -- inclusive of the right to repeat verbatim what someone else has already said -- with a supposed natural right of copyright -- which is a right to prohibit people from saying things merely because someone else has said them first? AFAICT it cannot be done. Please feel free to take a stab at it.
However if IP is unownable then complaints about labels are silly as they really did the bulk of the work.
Certain complaints about publishers are silly regardless. They frequently do a lot of the work, and I have no problem with authors making bad deals that give most of the profits (if there are any) to publishers. Authors aren't children, are engaged in business, and don't need to be protected from such things. It's a serious business, and they need to behave seriously to avoid being exploited. Or else what's next? We say that authors don't have to pay taxes because they're too irresponsible with their finances to have that expected of them?
Yes. So what?
Where the hell was copyright -- authorial copyright, not stationer's copyright or outright censorship -- in existence since the 15th century?
There's a reason why everyone basically starts with the Statute of Anne: Things called copyright prior to that were really just systems of official censorship and trade monopolies. They weren't anything like copyright as we think of it now, and aren't really worth mentioning.
Making a copy of a book costs next to nothing compared to the cost of writing the first copy, but we still want there to be authors, and you can't expect book to be published solely by people who have some other job that pays the bills.
First, technically, what we want is for there to be newly created original, creative works. I don't care if authors produce them or if they magically fall out of the sky (or more likely, are eventually produced by computer programs that take a random number as an input and generate a ripping good yarn as output). Even if we only develop tools that assist authors, this can be pretty good, as it reduces the number of author-hours needed to create a work, and either 1) results in the same quantity of works for less cost, allowing us to reduce copyright etc. accordingly, or 2) increases the quantity of works at the same cost, which reduces the amount of protection that each work enjoys, letting authors try to make it up in volume. We've seen an early example of this with painting largely being replaced by photography and photography being supplemented with computers. But we're getting off-topic.
Second, yes, we can fully expect books to be written by people who have some other job that pays the bills. Most authors of any sort do not make a living from copyright-related revenue from their work. And prior to the invention of copyright in 1710, and then only in England (it spread only a little in the 18th century, and mostly in the 19th century, largely thanks to colonialism) all authors needed real jobs or ways of making money from their works that didn't rely on copyrights. And it worked -- they created and published a lot of works. And it still works, as your typical musician, or literary author, or visual artist, or whatever, has a real job that pays the bills.
Copyright holds the promise of incentivizing authors to create yet more works, but if we were to abolish it tomorrow, works would still be created and published. The issue is mainly one of value for money; we want to grant the least amount of copyright (in both the scope of protection and the length in time it persists) which yields the most amount of works that otherwise would not have been created and published.
Tyranny of the masses and all that.
Copyright is inherently tyranny of the masses. It can't be avoided. Everyone has an inherent right of free speech which includes the right to repeat verbatim what someone else has said. This is why I can go out and stand on the street corner and recite Shakespeare; there's no law saying that I can, just a law saying that my pre-existing right to do so is recognized and will not be infringed upon.
When we grant copyright, we are censoring everyone -- telling them that they may not exercise their right as to certain works -- for what is perceived to be a benefit to society -- that more original, creative works will be created and published than otherwise would be, and that this, even after the harm caused by censoring people, is a net benefit to society. It is nothing more than the masses telling those who disagree that their right of free speech is nevertheless curtailed, and they must fall into line for the benefit of all.
Altering the specifics is no more tyrannical. Copyright was never intended to benefit authors any more than a better variety of hay was intended to benefit cows; copyright is intended to benefit society as a whole, just as the hay is meant to benefit the farmer, who gets more milk to sell at market. You're confusing the means with the ends.
Personally, I think that copyright can provide a net public benefit, and that it's worthwhile to society to have some kind of copyright, though it would be rather different, and likely much reduced from what we have now (which does not appear to provide more of a benefit than a detriment, and certainly does not appear to maximize the net public benefit). But it is entirely possible that circumstances will change such that no amou
Even if you do, it can be difficult. A few years ago, Japan had a program offering to pay dekasegi (Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry who moved to Japan) to leave Japan, go back to Brazil, or Peru, or wherever, and permanently give up their visas. I don't know if it's still going on.
the only question is what stimulates artists to create.
Indeed. Term lengths dramatically increased in 1978 due to the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act. Why then did we not see a surge of creative works created and published which, but for the term extension, would not have been? AFAICT advances in technology and societal changes are responsible for the increase in the quantity of creative works created and published since then, which presumably would've happened anyway.
Beyond a fairly short period of time, I don't think that it actually does stimulate authors. Some particularly irrational authors may think that it does, but I'd bet good money that if we reduced the term lengths dramatically, they would not quit creating works and go work at a real job instead. Copyright relies on manipulating authors to work for little actual reward, urged on by mirages. That's fine, but I don't think that it takes so much to get them to do it; they're easy marks and we don't have to try so hard.
Rather, long terms are specifically designed to help already-established authors and publishers, neither of whom need it.
No, actually.
Remember, creative works are like the lottery: there are many works, but the vast majority have no copyright-related value ever. Of the remainder, a tiny few have some copyright-related value, but usually not too much, and not for too long. The timeframe differs depending on the type of work (a daily newspaper is worthless in less than 24 hours, a decent movie usually has a few years) but in general it's astonishingly rare to have a work that is still got copyright-related value about 10-15 years after it was first released. Creating one of those works is like winning the lottery.
If someone other than an author wanted to provide for his family after he died, which would you suggest: a big pile of scratch off tickets, or sensible savings, investments, life insurance policies, social welfare system, etc.?
Plus, it's typical for works with long term copyright revenue to start out making a lot of money, so where did it go? If the author squandered it all, why are we giving him even more copyright to save him from his own mistake?
Basically, because long terms are of no use for almost everyone, and usually only help people who don't need the help, what you're really suggesting is that we set up a special welfare system for authors that helps the rich at public expense, while encouraging the poor and middle class to behave irresponsibly.
You can start being ashamed of yourself anytime.
The better solution is to have copyrights last for a fixed term of years from the first publication or release of the work. There might be optional renewal terms, but these too would be fixed in number and duration. The maximum possible term length would be known from day one. This allows for planning early on. In addition, since we can't order that works have copyright related revenue, we set up general purpose social welfare programs that help out anyone in need (not just authors), and encourage people to save and invest carefully, take out life insurance, etc. Do it as part of a home ec or personal finances class in high school, college, and as adult education. And regulate the banks to make sure that the system isnt just a scam. And again, this helps everyone, not just authors.
The widows and orphans argument for copyright terms is bunk and always was.
Ah, that's it; I had only been thinking of the functional elements.
Yes, in that case I'd agree with you that games are probably best protected by utility patents for the working bits and design patents for the ornamental elements (so as to avoid the utility doctrine in copyright and other rules that could result in a loss of protection), with a smattering of copyright for the expression of instructions, and for art that's clearly separable from useful material, and at least for the duration of the core patents, a trademark on the name. If the game is a computer game, I'd prefer there not be software utility patents, but copyright could cover some of the code itself.
(Oh, and copyrights are worldwide ... this judge has effectively granted the author a game a world-wide patent upon it. Let the games begin!)
No they're not. Copyrights are national, there's just a system of reciprocity in granting them nationally. Remember the thing with Amazon and 1984? That happened because the book was in the public domain in Australia, and copyrighted in the US, due to national differences in copyright law.
And anyway, copyrights are not patent substitutes. Although this opinion certainly tries to make for one; it's pretty badly done.
If Tetris was such a simple concept that it shouldn't deserve copyright protection, then why would official Tetris be so much more popular than profitable than not-quite-Tetris?
Branding.
Anyone can make playing cards, but some brands of playing cards (e.g. Bicycle) remain popular. There are probably people who swear by dice (an ancient gaming invention) made by one manufacturer over another even when there's no discernible difference. Going a little further afield, anyone can make blue jeans, but people keep Levi's in business.
Of course, then there's a whole 'nother argument as to whether or not there is a protectable TETRIS trademark. (I would say that there is not, per the Shredded Wheat case, but it requires evidence that I don't feel like gathering at great expense)
Tetris is more than just a "set of polygons that can be constructed out of 4 congruent squares,"
Yes. Tetris is:
A playing field taller than it is wide, preferably 10 blocks wide by 20 blocks high, though it can vary.
Into which tetrominos fall from the top, one at a time, moving down, at varying rates according to the difficulty of the game and player inputs. Where all possible tetrominos are employed. Where the player can rotate or drop the tetrominos at will until they come to rest against a surface, either the bottom of the field or an already-resting tetromino.
If a complete horizontal line of tetrominos is formed by the player, the line disappears, increasing the score.
And optionally, pre-filled garbage blocks in the field to increase difficulty.
And optionally, a display of the next piece to be dropped into the field.
And optionally, where the active and next pieces (and perhaps other pieces) are different colors, each color uniquely corresponding to the shape of the tetromino, to aid in player recognition of the piece.
I think that about covers it, though I may have forgotten something. It's really no different from going through the rules that define baseball -- the ball has to meet certain requirements, the field has to be certain dimensions, the play works in a particular way, etc. You can change things, but the more you change, the more different the game is, like the effect of the designated hitter rule. Eventually you end up with a different game altogether, albeit still related, much like how softball or rounders are similar to baseball, but not baseball.
If none of this were true, no one would bother trying to make exact copies of Tetris such as Mino, and people wouldn't get all flustered trying to argue such copies should be legal.
It's a popular game, and since the game -- as distinguished from a particular program implementing the game -- is wholly unprotected in the US at least, why shouldn't people want to cash in on it? Any idiot can build a billiards table and sell it. This is the same type of thing.
People are arguing it is legal because it is legal and it is rather silly to argue otherwise. Things would be different if tetris had been patented, but that never happened. Copyright is not an acceptable substitute, however.
Why design patents? Surely the rules of a game are a method of operation for playing the game. Unless games aren't useful, a regular utility patent would seem to be a better choice to me. The 'tap' patent from the Magic card game is a utility patent, but that's the only game rule patent I know of.
Now, there very well may be some people who create something and live off it for the rest of their lives without creating another thing. So what? If someone creates something so wonderful/critical/popular that it still generates income 50 years later why shouldn't they benefit from that? What if that work was the only idea they had? Shortening copyright sure isn't going to make them come up with another idea. What if they didn't really enjoy the process of creating that work, or found it too demanding to do so - how is a shorter copyright going to help that? Do you think that somehow people who create things are incapable of ever doing anything else, so by limiting copyright you will somehow force them to create more? Furthermore, what if they created that work that everyone just has to have solely for the purpose of living off it for the rest of their life? Would the world be better off not having that work at all?
I don't care about any of that except the bit at the end. The idea, boiled down a lot, is to 'pay' in terms of granting copyright protection, as little as possible while still getting the work. If the author would have created the work in exchange for a 5 year term, granting anything beyond that is wasteful and incurs a needless cost at public expense. There are ways to tailor copyright terms to try to minimize the amount granted while still being enough to incentivize the author into creating and publishing it when he otherwise wouldn't. We no longer employ any of those techniques, the system is so screwed up.
Copyright isn't meant to be welfare for authors. First, most copyrights are worthless, and most of the remainder are worthless after a very short time. You might as well give poor people lottery tickets instead of food stamps. Second, it's unfair, since it privileges authors instead of other people who need welfare. If you just want to help them out, keep copyright terms as short as possible, and protections as limited in scope as possible, while still getting the works we want, and then have social welfare programs for food, housing, medical care, etc. which any poor person can take advantage of.
Lastly, they did not stop anyone from writing a similar game. There are loads of games 'similar' to Tetris (PopIt, etc). Of course, those games actually required some innovation, so as to not be direct copies of Tetris. They stopped someone from making the SAME game. The clone game is not innovative in the least, and contributes absolutely nothing to society.
Copyright doesn't protect game rules or gameplay. Only patents can do that, and there is no tetris patent. The cloners were within their rights to copy the underlying game exactly. Whether they innovate or not is irrelevant. Whether it contributes to society is irrelevant. The only thing they can't copy are things which are not part of the underlying game of tetris, and which are creative and copyrightable. AFAICT they did infringe a little, but not as much as the court here thinks; having read the opinion, I think the court seriously misunderstood and misapplied the law.
Wrong. Copyright's intention is to SPUR innovation. It does that by telling people 'if you invent something, it is yours. We will prevent others from doing the same thing for a period of time'.
No. Copyright's purpose is to encourage the creation and publication of certain creative works, which otherwise would not have been created and published, while causing no or minimal harm to the public due to restrictions on the use of said works, such that the net benefit to the public is greater than if there were no copyright.
It's got nothing to do with innovation. Creative works need to be original and creative, not innovative. Dull-as-dishwater works which, while possessing a modicum of creativity, do not innovate anything at all, are perfectly eligible for copyright. And it's got nothing to do with invention; that's patents. And you haven't explained patents either. It's basically about quantity: More is better if the cost imposed on society isn't too high.