Decent AAA games now cost $20-50 million dollars to make. Guess how many copies the publisher has to sell to recoup those development costs? Thats right, a lot of them. Gamestop is leeching away 20-30% of their potential sales, that is a big deal for the publishers, and thats why they're trying to fight it with these DLC and online tying efforts.
In that case, they should make games that are cheaper to develop. No one ever said that there was an especially profitable, or even viable market for games that cost several tens of millions of dollars to write.
The Copyright Act entitles a plaintiff to a sum of not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per act of infringement (that is, per sound recording downloaded or distributed without license), as you consider just.
In the second, there is some conflicting language. The instruction says "You must determine the just amount of damages to award for each act of infringement, as set out below," although where a value is to be entered, it says "[W]hat damages do you award the Plaintiff for this copyrighted work."
I think there's a valid argument as to confusing instructions.
The special verdict form required them to write the amount of damages for each work - they had to write "$22,500" 30 times. So to say that they ended up intending only to award $22,500 is a bit of a stretch.
No, I mean they would've written $750 30 times, but that here, they instead multiplied each of the 30 awards of $750 by another 30, resulting in the $22,500 figure. The extra 30 is the suspicious round number, which could indicate multiplying the minimum to account for multiple acts of infringement, even though statutory damages should only be awarded per work, regardless of the number of infringements.
I think there's both congressional record, statutory, and case history precedent for interpreting willfulness as "malicious" or "fraudulent", and I don't think Tenenbaum counted as either.
More or less the dispute between which is required: willful copying (e.g. I am deliberately downloading this track) and willful infringement (e.g. I am aware that downloading this track will infringe its copyright, and I am deliberately doing so)?
Might work, but there was a damning conversation that Tenenbaum had with his father about this sort of thing being infringing, so I think that the best he'd manage would be to require plaintiffs to show infringement after that conversation to still get to willfulness.
Are you trying to be serious right now? I'm just a stupid scandinavian, but in our neck of the woods the civil court would certainly fine you, and possibly disbar you for wasting their time.
No, he's talking about before it goes to court. If you think someone is infringing on your rights, the cheapest, quickest, and easiest way to resolve it is to write them a letter asking them to stop. If it works, you're done. If not, then think about suing them in order to enforce your rights. Of course, the letter is optional, but even the courts would prefer that you don't immediately go to court, as the courts are busy enough.
Nasty letters are entirely capable of including claims of rights and demands based on those rights that a court wouldn't agree you have, or are being infringed, or are appropriate. There's a fair amount of leeway for nasty letters.
I was disappointed to see that Tenenbaum did not include another, more solid ground for having the damages award looked over. During the case, the plaintiff's attorneys proposed a jury instruction to the effect that the statutory damages should be calculated per infringement. The judge agreed, and that was how the jury was ultimately instructed. However, the statute is very specific that statutory infringements are calculated per work, not per infringement. Given that the final award was an even multiple -- a nice, round number, in fact -- of the minimum that could be awarded, there is a possibility that the jury meant to award the minimum, but then mistakenly multiplied the award by the number of times the works were infringed.
I, and at least one other person in the gallery at the trial were very surprised that the plaintiffs proposed that instruction, and that the defendant didn't object to it. Well, not too surprised; the defense attorneys didn't seem very good at this. But you'd think they would have brought it up by now.
NewYorkCountryLawyer insists that "damages" don't include the money lost through OTHER people downloading that the plaintiff offered up for sharing. He thinks that damages should only count the original download.
Well, let's suppose that the plaintiffs -- Tenenbaum is the defendant -- get their way, and Tenenbaum has to pay damages based upon both his own infringements, and the separate infringements of the people who downloaded from him. Then, the same plaintiffs go into court and sue those other downloaders successfully, recovering damages for their infringements from them.
In that case, the plaintiffs will have gotten damages for the same infringement (by the people who download from Tenenbaum, as distinct from his uploading to them) twice. Do you think that it is fair for them to receive that sort of windfall?
While I don't think that Tenenbaum should only be responsible for his initial downloading, why would we not draw the line at leaving him responsible for the things that he did, and not for the things that other people did?
Okay, but the important part is that the fact exists, independently of your reporting upon it, not whether it could be discovered independently. Even if it could not be discovered independently, so long as it doesn't owe its origin to you, it is uncopyrightable.
The way the U.S. Supreme Court ruling reads, it is not possible to copyright facts that could (at least in theory) be obtained without any reference to the copyrighted work.
That's certainly a possible outcome, but that's not what the case is about.
The main thing to remember is that copyright only protects works which are, among other things, original. A work is original if the author is who originated it. A fact exists regardless of an author, however. Merely discovering a fact, and being the first person to report upon it, does not mean that it originated with you. Facts are uncopyrightable because they are unoriginal, not because they are facts. (Much like the copyright in a derivative work only covers the original portions of that work, and not the material that was derived from a previous work, which is either covered under the previous work's copyright, or not at all)
I think that people here are getting too caught up in talking about facts, without recognizing the basis for the policy. Thus while it might be a 'fact' that the first word I wrote in this post is 'That's' and the second word is 'certainly,' and so forth, and so on, since I originated this post, rather than copying it, the parts I originated are not rendered uncopyrightable on the basis of being unoriginal.
If he could demonstrate that the only possible way that you could have obtained the information you are copying is by reference, even if only indirectly, to his list.
That doesn't matter. If the material is uncopyrightable, then how the second person gets it, or how the second person might have got it, is irrelevant. Copying uncopyrighted material is never infringing. There would have to be something copyrighted that was copied to give rise to infringement.
For example, if somebody published a phonebook that color coded different businesses by how long they had been in the area, that particular system of color coding would be copyrightable.
Well, no, that particular phone book might be copyrightable. Systems, like ideas, are never copyrightable; someone else could work out the algorithm you're using (if it wasn't made obvious) and use it themselves on other phone books, unless you were to patent it.
So ironically, the more accurate a model or a map is, the greater the content of true facts (rather than selective approximations), and thus the more susceptible to be used as a legtitimate source of facts for models and maps created by others. Of course determining what is and what isn't a fact in the original map or model is a major burden on the latter, as it should be. If you do not have two or more independent sources for the same information, it can be rather risky.
Well, facts are not copyrightable, but a particular compilation of facts may be, due to the creativity in the selection and arrangement of those facts. If the selection and arrangement is not creative, e.g. a phone book that includes all listings, in alphabetical order, there's no copyright; if they are creative, e.g. a phone book that only includes your favorite restaurants and shops, listed in the order in which you think people ought to visit them, then there may be a copyright in that. Of course that copyright still doesn't prevent people from copying the underlying facts.
So if false facts are placed in a work, either deliberately or accidentally, their presence in a second work is a good indicator of copying. If the selection and arrangement are copyrightable and are copied as well, this could be infringing. But note that if something is presented as a fact, even if it is not true, others may rely upon it as a fact for copyright purposes (with the usual caveats about selection and arrangement). This has come up with books that claim things like the Hindenburg was destroyed by a bomb, or John Dillinger lived to old age, and movies and tv episodes that take those 'facts' and run with them.
Also, it is not appropriate to wield copyright as a sword, imposing "major burden[s]" on others. Copyright is meant to encourage authors, not discourage other authors. Forcing authors to constantly reinvent the wheel deters progress, as does establishing a system in which existing authors essentially have a veto power over new authors. Given that any author is likely to use others' works (or at least get close enough that expensive and lengthy legal battles might have to be fought, even if they'd be won) more than they have their own work used, it's generally safer and better for everyone involved for restrictions to be light.
a copyright holder shouldn't have to make themselves known to anyone, regardless of the reason.
Then why should I support laws that grant them a copyright at all, permit a copyright to continue existing, or allow the copyright holder to enjoy legal remedies such as money damages and injunctions?
Copyright is meant to serve the public interest, by incentivizing the creation and publication of works that otherwise would not be created and published, while encumbering the public with minimal (preferably no) restrictions as to those works, as measured in both the scope of the restrictions and their duration.
The public doesn't benefit by granting copyrights to authors who didn't require them, or by granting copyrights which are broader or last longer than are absolutely necessary, or where the benefit to the public of having a work created and published is less than the harm caused by the restrictions imposed on the public as to that work, even if the work would not have been created and published but for those restrictions.
It's impossible to read the mind of authors to determine whether a copyright would be necessary, but of anyone, authors are in the best position to make this judgment. If an author doesn't care about a copyright for a work, it probably isn't necessary to grant a copyright for that work. If an author does care about a copyright for a work, there's some chance it was necessary. Registration is how we have authors identify themselves so that we know who to grant copyrights to, and who not to. Frequently requiring renewals for short periods of time are also necessary so that as soon as an author loses interest in maintaining a copyright, the work can enter the public domain.
Registration and renewal are also useful for allowing third parties to know whether the work is copyrighted, if so, who to contact in order to license or purchase rights, and whether or not a person claiming to be the copyright holder actually is.
However, this does not cover posting videos online, like UCLA was doing.
That would be 110(2), but it has a number of limitations to it, such that UCLA might not have qualified for it, depending on precisely what it had been doing.
And of course, where no other exception applies, and where the use would otherwise be infringing, fair use may always be raised as a defense. It might not succeed, as not every use is necessarily a fair use, but it might succeed, as any use is potentially a fair use.
Not quite "as they see fit". There are 2 important restrictions:
* it must be limited in time
* it must be "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
There's a few more restrictions. The clause is "The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science . . . by securing for limited times to authors . . . the exclusive right to their respective writings . . .."
So if we are to have copyrights, they must: Promote the progress of science; Be for limited times; Be granted to the authors of the works -- although this doesn't prevent the author from giving his rights away later or disclaiming them altogether; Not be granted to those who are not authors of the works, such as those who discover facts that they did not themselves create; Be exclusive in nature (i.e. a right to exclude others); Concern writings, and therefore not apply to inventions, ideas, marks, unwritten creative works (e.g. unwritten, unrecorded speeches), etc.
But as I said before, subject to a few restrictions.
Congress (who received a mandate [or if mandate is too strong a word, at least explicit permission] to do so directly from the Constitution)
Mandate is too strong a word. The Constitution empowers Congress to grant copyrights, or not, as they see fit, subject to a few restrictions, but it neither requires them to do so, nor encourages them.
This development benefits not only the huge mind-bogglingly expensive productions, but "trickles down" into the technologies that improve even the cheap camcorders that are an alternative.
Yes, I'm sure that happens sometimes. I know that Photoshop got a boost in its very early days before it was sold to Adobe, due to its use in movie special effects. On the other hand, though, the large copyright interests tend to behave in a staid, rent-seeking manner; the movie industry tried to kill home videotaping, and the record industry tried to kill portable mp3 players (and did kill DAT and Minidisc with crippling restrictions).
In fact, generally, it's been people not associated with copyright industries who have brought us the best cheap technologies. As the two groups grow together, or collude, we get crippled technologies, meant to lock users into a particular hardware platform, which is the one that has the blessings of the paranoid copyright holders. For example, while HDMI is convenient in that it reduces the number of cables needed in the vicinity of a tv (though it has some technical defects), why should it be encumbered with HDCP? It is of no benefit to the user. It benefits the copyright holders -- or at least they think it does. It benefits the major consumer electronics manufacturers, who get licensing fees from those not in the pool of companies that developed it.
Further, the increasing amounts of lockdown on hardware and software benefit the established players even more by preventing newcomers from upsetting the ancien régime. Newspapers would prefer it if people didn't blog, aggregate news, or supplant them with ebay, craigslist, yelp, etc., for example. The record industry didn't want people to get cheap digital audio gear that was useful to musicians; if you wanted to record your own music digitally and distribute it out of your trunk, you either had to fork over for 'professional' grade DAT equipment, or circumvent the 1-bit flag on SCMS to use the cheap equipment. (Earlier they had tried to ban the equipment in the US altogether, or to mandate that it be even more crippled)
I'm sure that the movie industry would be happy to avoid people getting cheap camcorders as well. Such camcorders could only be used as toys (in which case they don't benefit), or to make films outside of the system (in which case they're a threat), or for piracy (in which case they're a threat). If such things can't help them, and may harm them, of course they'll try to stop them.
But the movie industry and other "big business" art employs a lot of people in its productions, and you can include authors and other media in the equation.
Well, from a simple jobs perspective, must we have big studios and big productions, or could authors break apart into small studios with small productions, without it putting lots of people out of work? Note, incidentally, that the big studio system only occurs in some types of art. Looking on IMDB, Avatar had around 1,700 different people working on it. Meanwhile, JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books by herself.
Further, even if they can't exclusively support themselves, having it be lucrative enough to be encouraging has some value.
Oh sure, I don't mind preying upon their optimism. But then, at least as far back as Samuel Johnson, we had authors who would only write in exchange for money, and he didn't need nearly so much lucre. We could massively reduce copyright right now and only barely reduce the amount of money that can be gotten out of it, so why don't we?
Not sure what you mean. If you mean "exploit" as in to "fully utilize as a resource" then I would agree, but that doesn't seem to be what you say, since you definitely seem to mean this negatively.
No, I mean fully utilize as a resource. A dairy farmer doesn't keep a herd of cows because he likes them, he keeps them in order to get their milk at the least cost to himself, and to reap the largest reward from it. If the milk came from a magic cornuc
No, it should be free to develop software and make it available to others.
But if a contributor wants to be able to exercise the full power of copyright law in order to have the work not copied, modified, or distributed, except as he wishes, then for that he may need to pay, just like anyone else who wants similar powers.
Well, let's bear in mind that copyright hasn't got anything to do with the quality of works. Copyrights are equally available for both works of high and low quality, and offer equal amounts of protection for each. Further, there's no mechanism in copyright law to determine the quality of a work, not that there's even an objective way to do so to begin with, and not that anyone would want the government making these decisions subjectively. Copyright is about quantity, not quality.
Likewise, neither is it about works that are expensive to create. In fact, for two works of equal monetizable popularity, copyright holders will benefit more from the work that was cheaper to produce.
The goal of copyright is to promote the progress of science, by encouraging the creation and publication of as many works as possible which, but for copyright, would not be created and published, and; by imposing as few restrictions on the public as possible, in terms of both scope and duration.
If the public benefits the most by having multi-hundred-million dollar movies, and all the impositions that go with them in order to make their business model viable, then fine, I'm in favor of it. Or, if the public benefits the most by having a flood of cheap movies made by amateurs with camcorders and desktop video software, then fine, I'm in favor of it. There's no rule that says that we have to have mind-bogglingly expensive movies. Even if they are really great, if they come at too high a cost, we are literally better off without them.
it's in everyone's interest if it's feasible to support oneself through the production of art in its various forms
No, it's not. Plus, even today, it usually isn't feasible. Some people manage it. I used to support myself as an artist, although the copyrights on my works were utterly irrelevant to everyone, and I never got or needed so much as a penny from them. But usually, the stereotype of the starving artist is pretty well founded. Most authors would do a better job of supporting themselves if instead of working on their art for a given amount of time, they spent that time working a minimum wage job, instead.
So long as the art gets created and published, who cares whether the author can support himself doing it? I'm more than happy to allow the unrealistic optimism of other people to deliver to me what I want. (No surprise then, that I enjoyed buying things from Kozmo back in the day)
Now, I don't want authors to have to live in the gutter, or starve in the streets, but there's nothing special about authors; I don't want anyone to do those things. Given that an author has better odds of winning the lottery than of getting rich from their copyrights, supporting copyright as a way to help authors is an insipid idea, as it will almost never accomplish that goal. In fact, copyright is a way to exploit authors for the benefit of the public. Instead of using copyright as a crappy welfare system, real social welfare programs, open to all in need of them, should be used to help alleviate poverty.
Revolutions can be good and necessary, but a lot of them leave things worse off than they found them, so it behooves us all to be careful, thoughtful, and well-informed as we try to change the world.
I agree, but I don't think that we need a revolution. At least not as to copyright. Modest reforms will suffice. We can drastically cut copyright terms with little to no harm to authors, as most of the money that can ever be made from a copyright on a work is made very quickly upon the first publication in a given medium. E.g. movies tend to have diminishing returns every week after being released in theaters, and diminishing returns every week after being released on home video; the commercial lifespan of a daily morning newspaper is barely alive after lunch, and dead after dinner -- so what do they need such long copyrights for? We can limit copyright to works where it has actively been sought, rather than idiotically handing them out whether they're wanted or not
What about corporate crime or accidentally released code?
Frankly, I'd still want registrations, but if it is someone else's fault that the work was made public, they'd need to be liable for damages.
Or open source? In order to maintain the GPL every revision must be copyrighted, otherwise the changes are in the public domain regardless of what the license says.
OSS would not be exempted. If it is important to the developers that the software be open sourced and that the license on it (e.g. the GPL) be enforceable by means of copyright, then they can register and renew. If they don't care enough (which seems unlikely), then why should I?
Incidentally, this raises the issue of another traditional formality that needs strengthening: deposit. For software, a requirement of copyright ought to be providing the Copyright Office with a complete copy of the software's code, formatted, and with such supplementary information, as the Copyright Office shall require, so that the software can be understood and modified by a person having ordinary skill in the art, so that the work might 1) be more valuable to the public while copyrighted (in much the same way that a copyrighted song can inspire a new style of music by musicians that listen to it, without this constituting infringement), and 2) be more valuable to the public after the term expires, by making it reasonably possible that it could be copied, altered, adapted, but still be viable. While this isn't free software during the copyright period, it is at least inspectable, and that's an improvement.
Because it is opt-in to copyright. If an author fails to opt-in, or if the copyright holder fails to continually renew their opt-in, the work enters the public domain.
True, if Google wanted to scan a copyrighted work, they'd still need to find an applicable exception to copyright, such as fair use, or get permission from the author. But this would massively reduce the number of works still under copyright, because most authors wouldn't care to copyright their works at all, or to maintain the copyright. And for those works that were copyrighted, there would be contact information for the copyright holder that was much more likely to be up to date, allowing Google to more easily contact them if it sought permission.
So.. everytime you commit changes to a VCS, you pay $1 to register that snippet of code?
Only if you want to try to copyright it (if too minor, it might not be copyrightable) and if it would certainly enter the public domain if not registered (cf. unpublished development inside a business, eventually resulting in a single finished work being published).
And presumably, only if you can't have multiple changes covered under a single registration as a group registration or as a single work.
Remember, the goal is not to make things difficult on authors. Rather, the goal is to ensure that copyrights are only granted for eligible works, with specificity as to what constitutes the work, and only upon the explicit request of the author. In this way we avoid granting copyrights unthinkingly, and unnecessarily.
Also note that there is a lot more countries than just one.
Well, I'm only interested in reforms in the US. If other countries want to reform their own laws, which may involve their own formalities, that's fine with me. Each country should have the copyright laws that are best for its own people; there's no need for uniformity, so long as citizens and non-citizens are treated identically. I would only hope that the countries of the world would try to cooperate to ensure that different formalities in different countries didn't result in mutually exclusive copyrights, forcing authors to choose one country or the other in which to be protected.
But if an author doesn't care enough about a copyright in Pottsylvania to comply with whatever formalities they have, then let the work be in the public domain there. Since copyright typically includes a right over importation, ignoring one part of the world shouldn't disadvantage authors too much in the parts of the world they care about.
The solution of course, is registration and renewal.
To get a copyright, an author must opt-in by registering with the various national copyright offices in the countries in which he seeks protection. If he fails to do this within a modest period of time (say, 1 year after the first publication of the work, anywhere in the world, where publication is taken very broadly, or 5 years after creation of the work if unpublished), the work falls into the public domain. For copyrighted works, the copyright term is very short (say, 1 year from registration), but can be extended for another term if the copyright holder renews the copyright before the current term expires; if he fails to do this, the work falls into the public domain. And the number of renewals is limited depending on the class of work (e.g. software might have a maximum copyright length of 5 years, while a movie might have a maximum length of 20 years), letting the work fall into the public domain when it can no longer be renewed and the last term expires.
The forms for registration and renewal would always require the applicant to provide up-to-date contact information. This would be further strengthened by strengthening and enlarging the notice formality, using unique IDs for works, similar to how patents are handled and patented goods are marked. Not only would third parties have a good idea who held the copyright at any given time, but they'd also have a good idea of which copyrights were involved to aid in finding the right records to begin with.
This is by no means difficult for authors. In the US, registration and renewal, by various means, were standard features of our copyright system for nearly two centuries, and we managed okay. The paperwork is roughly about as difficult as a change of address form filed with the Post Office, and in any case, authors encounter plenty of forms in their daily lives just like the rest of us, whether it's taxes, registering to vote, getting a driver's license, filling out an intake form at the doctor's office, etc. They're not children, and don't need to be coddled. There might be fees, but they should be kept to a minimum, merely to avoid having people abuse the system, rather than to raise revenue, or make the system self-supporting, or to tax authors. I'd be perfectly happy with a token $1 fee per registration or renewal.
The U.S. is only a part of the world, and it's certainly not the country you want to dictate international copyright law
I don't think that any country should dictate international copyright, or that there should even be international copyright law. Each country should implement whatever laws are best for its own people. International cooperation with regard to copyright should be limited to informally ensuring that their laws are not mutually exclusive such that an author would be unable to get copyrights in all of them, should he choose (and should they be available).
Why the hell should I care about your constitution?
If you're not an American, that's fine. But in crafting any law that applies here, it is very important.
Obviously, your constitution has been of absolutely no help.
Nowhere else seems to be doing better. The problem is one of corruption and/or indifference in lawmaking bodies, allowing industries to write the law.
Also, the restrictions on public consumption of culture you speak of evidently does not exist: you're practically drowning in cultural expressions, the majority produced in the country of perpetual copyright
Copyright must serve the public interest by encouraging authors to create and publish as many works as possible, while restricting the public as little as possible. Merely having a lot of works isn't sufficient. Works should also be as close to being in the public domain as possible while copyrighted, and enter the public domain as rapidly as possible.
Which probably means you're not exactly honest in your intensions: you simply want things for free.
Well, of course. That's the ultimate goal of copyright: to have as many public domain works as possible, as soon as possible. If we didn't want things for free, we wouldn't have copyright.
No, it's an entirely American feature of copyright.
Well, we got the idea from the British, who had a registration system before we did, but in any event, I never said it was commonly found around the world. I said it was essential. The vast majority of copyright laws are deeply flawed, and one of the major flaws to be found is the practice of granting copyrights automatically, rather than only granting them when requested, and requiring further requests to renew it periodically.
would demand so much in bureaucratic manpower
Not at all, as we know from having required it for most of our history. First, most authors won't bother seeking a copyright for most works, because they simply don't care about it (either at all, or for those works in particular), and who are we to issue copyrights when they aren't wanted by the people who would get them?
Second, of those authors who will seek a copyright for a particular work, history again shows that fewer and fewer renewals will be requested over time, further lessening the burden on the bureaucrats.
Third, by providing an online system for registrations and renewals (and perhaps in some cases, deposit), a lot of the work can be automated. Hardcopy forms should still be accepted, but the Copyright Office is already moving in this direction, just as the PTO already did for patent and trademark filings. This system could also be used for copyright searches.
Fourth, by requiring that copies of copyrighted works published in the US include the copyright's application or registration number (as appropriate, if there was one at the time the copy was published) in some reasonable manner, and by requiring that legal documents, demands and filings (contracts, cease and desist letters, DMCA takedown notices, civil complaints, etc.) contain that information, we can leverage the interest of parties hostile to the copyright holder to engage in error checking with regard to works that are in some way contentious. True, errors regarding a work that no one other than the author ever cares about might go uncaught, but there's little harm if so.
It really isn't any trouble at all. This isn't like the patent system, where examiners have a lot of work to do per application. Unless there's a really obvious fault, I'd expect most copyright registrations to issue.
It's an awfully long comment from someone who clearly do not understand what copyright is and what it's for,
Well, I am known for writing awfully long comments. But I think I've got a clue as to what copyright is, and what it's for. It's a government-granted monopoly, which restricts free speech, and it is intended to serve the public interest by promoting the progress of science. Only granting copyrights when requested, instead of doing so mindlessly for everything under the sun seems like a good way to serve the public interest to me.
When you buy the CD, you buy the right to listen to the song in perpetuity. You don't buy the right to make copies and give them to anyone who asks.
You've got it wrong, actually.
Everyone has a natural right to make copies of works, to modify works, to distribute copies of works, to perform and display works, etc. This is known as free speech. It is why I can stage a performance of Romeo and Juliet, even charging admission, if I please, without having to be William Shakespeare or getting permission from him, directly or through some third party. I have a right to repeat the words of others.
Copyright is not a right to actually do anything. Rather it is an exclusive right; a right to exclude others from doing the things they normally are free to do with the work. Copyright allows an copyright holder to prohibit someone else from making a copy of a book, but it doesn't even give the author the right to make copies of the book himself (for example, if the book is libelous, or if it contains child pornography, etc.).
When the copyright doesn't apply, due to its limits, or when it expires, the copyright holder simply stops being able to prohibit other people from doing as they like; their inherent rights can be freely exercised, but they were always there from the get-go.
So getting back to your example: No. When I buy a CD, I buy a CD. I do not buy a right to listen, because the copyright holder lacks any copyright-based 'listening right' he can grant to me. My right to listen originates from my mere existence, and he simply lacks a right that prohibits me from exercising it, so I can do it as I see fit. I also have an inherent right to make copies and distribute them, but that he can prohibit me from doing, so long as he has a copyright he can wield against me. When the copyright evaporates due to age, or when it doesn't apply due to particular circumstances (e.g. making copies as fair use, or when allowed by the AHRA), then again, my inherent rights are in control.
Registration is an essential feature of copyright, and one which needs to be dramatically strengthened.
Authors should only receive copyrights when it benefits the public to grant them, and then those rights should only be as broad in scope and lengthy in duration as is absolutely necessary, so as to minimize the cost to the public of granting them, and thus to maximize the value to the public of a created and published work.
If an author would create a work without needing a copyright, then he shouldn't get one, because he didn't require one. If an author would create a work if he could only get a copyright lasting one year, and which only restricted reproduction, then that's all he should get, because it's all he requires. And if an author would only create a work if the copyright lasted forever, and encompassed anything even vaguely related to the work -- selling used copies, mentioning the work in a review, making a later work that had a setting or plot that is even tenuously connected -- then we ought to seriously consider whether we should grant that copyright at all; the value of the work to the public may be less than the harm caused by granting the rights necessary to incentivize the author to create and publish it.
This is all common sense: if someone offered to wash your car for free, and you knew they'd do a good job, why not let them? Paying them for a free service might be nice, but it is ultimately wasteful, and would be inappropriate if you were paying with someone else's money (or in the case of copyright, the restrictions on the rights of the public to created and published works). If someone offered to paint your house for $100, and you knew they'd do a good job, again, why not let them? But don't pay them $100,000 -- that's just wasteful. If they're happy with the low number, having had the ability to ask for more, who are you to not accept it?
Registration is useful because we cannot read the minds of authors so as to know precisely how little copyright they will accept and be satisfied with; instead we let authors tell us outright by periodically opting in to the system. When we had registrations, most authors didn't bother to get copyrights for the works that they created and published. This was good for the public, since we got works for free. The relatively small number of authors that did register, usually didn't renew. This meant that while the public had to suffer some restrictions as 'payment' for those works, we ultimately got them for free sooner than we otherwise might. And only a small number of authors did rewnew, which was annoying, but ultimately acceptable.
Given that copyright is merely an economic incentive to authors (it can't make you famous, it can't cause you to be inspired, there are ways to make money other than copyrights, even today), and given that the vast majority of creative works have no copyright-related economic value, and that of the small number that do, their value is usually realized quickly after publication in a given medium, and that only a truly minute handful of works have lasting economic value, we could easily reduce the length of a copyright term to a year, and the maximum length of copyright if annually renewed to fifteen years, and we would pretty certainly see no reduction whatsoever in the number of works created. (Copyright is concerned with quantity, by the way, since the government is unable to judge quality, which is largely a matter of taste, and we wouldn't want it to try in this matter, anyway)
Now, copyright registrations should be trivial for authors to obtain. The form is already about as easy as the change of address form you fill out with the post office when you move. The registration fee is quite low. So long as it isn't absolutely free and automatic -- so as to avoid outright abuse -- I'm happy for it to be easy, to be available in many languages, and for the Copyright Office to assist authors around the world in obtaining copyrights. It isn't meant to harm authors, just to get them to identify them
Slashdot Mirror
Decent AAA games now cost $20-50 million dollars to make. Guess how many copies the publisher has to sell to recoup those development costs? Thats right, a lot of them. Gamestop is leeching away 20-30% of their potential sales, that is a big deal for the publishers, and thats why they're trying to fight it with these DLC and online tying efforts.
In that case, they should make games that are cheaper to develop. No one ever said that there was an especially profitable, or even viable market for games that cost several tens of millions of dollars to write.
No - the special verdict form had damages per work, not per infringement, in accordance with the statute.
Well, I'm looking at these documents: Jury Instructions, Jury Verdict Form.
In the first, the language is
In the second, there is some conflicting language. The instruction says "You must determine the just amount of damages to award for each act of infringement, as set out below," although where a value is to be entered, it says "[W]hat damages do you award the Plaintiff for this copyrighted work."
I think there's a valid argument as to confusing instructions.
The special verdict form required them to write the amount of damages for each work - they had to write "$22,500" 30 times. So to say that they ended up intending only to award $22,500 is a bit of a stretch.
No, I mean they would've written $750 30 times, but that here, they instead multiplied each of the 30 awards of $750 by another 30, resulting in the $22,500 figure. The extra 30 is the suspicious round number, which could indicate multiplying the minimum to account for multiple acts of infringement, even though statutory damages should only be awarded per work, regardless of the number of infringements.
I think there's both congressional record, statutory, and case history precedent for interpreting willfulness as "malicious" or "fraudulent", and I don't think Tenenbaum counted as either.
More or less the dispute between which is required: willful copying (e.g. I am deliberately downloading this track) and willful infringement (e.g. I am aware that downloading this track will infringe its copyright, and I am deliberately doing so)?
Might work, but there was a damning conversation that Tenenbaum had with his father about this sort of thing being infringing, so I think that the best he'd manage would be to require plaintiffs to show infringement after that conversation to still get to willfulness.
Are you trying to be serious right now? I'm just a stupid scandinavian, but in our neck of the woods the civil court would certainly fine you, and possibly disbar you for wasting their time.
No, he's talking about before it goes to court. If you think someone is infringing on your rights, the cheapest, quickest, and easiest way to resolve it is to write them a letter asking them to stop. If it works, you're done. If not, then think about suing them in order to enforce your rights. Of course, the letter is optional, but even the courts would prefer that you don't immediately go to court, as the courts are busy enough.
Nasty letters are entirely capable of including claims of rights and demands based on those rights that a court wouldn't agree you have, or are being infringed, or are appropriate. There's a fair amount of leeway for nasty letters.
I was disappointed to see that Tenenbaum did not include another, more solid ground for having the damages award looked over. During the case, the plaintiff's attorneys proposed a jury instruction to the effect that the statutory damages should be calculated per infringement. The judge agreed, and that was how the jury was ultimately instructed. However, the statute is very specific that statutory infringements are calculated per work, not per infringement. Given that the final award was an even multiple -- a nice, round number, in fact -- of the minimum that could be awarded, there is a possibility that the jury meant to award the minimum, but then mistakenly multiplied the award by the number of times the works were infringed.
I, and at least one other person in the gallery at the trial were very surprised that the plaintiffs proposed that instruction, and that the defendant didn't object to it. Well, not too surprised; the defense attorneys didn't seem very good at this. But you'd think they would have brought it up by now.
Oh well.
NewYorkCountryLawyer insists that "damages" don't include the money lost through OTHER people downloading that the plaintiff offered up for sharing. He thinks that damages should only count the original download.
Well, let's suppose that the plaintiffs -- Tenenbaum is the defendant -- get their way, and Tenenbaum has to pay damages based upon both his own infringements, and the separate infringements of the people who downloaded from him. Then, the same plaintiffs go into court and sue those other downloaders successfully, recovering damages for their infringements from them.
In that case, the plaintiffs will have gotten damages for the same infringement (by the people who download from Tenenbaum, as distinct from his uploading to them) twice. Do you think that it is fair for them to receive that sort of windfall?
While I don't think that Tenenbaum should only be responsible for his initial downloading, why would we not draw the line at leaving him responsible for the things that he did, and not for the things that other people did?
Okay, but the important part is that the fact exists, independently of your reporting upon it, not whether it could be discovered independently. Even if it could not be discovered independently, so long as it doesn't owe its origin to you, it is uncopyrightable.
The way the U.S. Supreme Court ruling reads, it is not possible to copyright facts that could (at least in theory) be obtained without any reference to the copyrighted work.
That's certainly a possible outcome, but that's not what the case is about.
The main thing to remember is that copyright only protects works which are, among other things, original. A work is original if the author is who originated it. A fact exists regardless of an author, however. Merely discovering a fact, and being the first person to report upon it, does not mean that it originated with you. Facts are uncopyrightable because they are unoriginal, not because they are facts. (Much like the copyright in a derivative work only covers the original portions of that work, and not the material that was derived from a previous work, which is either covered under the previous work's copyright, or not at all)
I think that people here are getting too caught up in talking about facts, without recognizing the basis for the policy. Thus while it might be a 'fact' that the first word I wrote in this post is 'That's' and the second word is 'certainly,' and so forth, and so on, since I originated this post, rather than copying it, the parts I originated are not rendered uncopyrightable on the basis of being unoriginal.
If he could demonstrate that the only possible way that you could have obtained the information you are copying is by reference, even if only indirectly, to his list.
That doesn't matter. If the material is uncopyrightable, then how the second person gets it, or how the second person might have got it, is irrelevant. Copying uncopyrighted material is never infringing. There would have to be something copyrighted that was copied to give rise to infringement.
For example, if somebody published a phonebook that color coded different businesses by how long they had been in the area, that particular system of color coding would be copyrightable.
Well, no, that particular phone book might be copyrightable. Systems, like ideas, are never copyrightable; someone else could work out the algorithm you're using (if it wasn't made obvious) and use it themselves on other phone books, unless you were to patent it.
So ironically, the more accurate a model or a map is, the greater the content of true facts (rather than selective approximations), and thus the more susceptible to be used as a legtitimate source of facts for models and maps created by others. Of course determining what is and what isn't a fact in the original map or model is a major burden on the latter, as it should be. If you do not have two or more independent sources for the same information, it can be rather risky.
Well, facts are not copyrightable, but a particular compilation of facts may be, due to the creativity in the selection and arrangement of those facts. If the selection and arrangement is not creative, e.g. a phone book that includes all listings, in alphabetical order, there's no copyright; if they are creative, e.g. a phone book that only includes your favorite restaurants and shops, listed in the order in which you think people ought to visit them, then there may be a copyright in that. Of course that copyright still doesn't prevent people from copying the underlying facts.
So if false facts are placed in a work, either deliberately or accidentally, their presence in a second work is a good indicator of copying. If the selection and arrangement are copyrightable and are copied as well, this could be infringing. But note that if something is presented as a fact, even if it is not true, others may rely upon it as a fact for copyright purposes (with the usual caveats about selection and arrangement). This has come up with books that claim things like the Hindenburg was destroyed by a bomb, or John Dillinger lived to old age, and movies and tv episodes that take those 'facts' and run with them.
Also, it is not appropriate to wield copyright as a sword, imposing "major burden[s]" on others. Copyright is meant to encourage authors, not discourage other authors. Forcing authors to constantly reinvent the wheel deters progress, as does establishing a system in which existing authors essentially have a veto power over new authors. Given that any author is likely to use others' works (or at least get close enough that expensive and lengthy legal battles might have to be fought, even if they'd be won) more than they have their own work used, it's generally safer and better for everyone involved for restrictions to be light.
Has anybody bothered to find out WHY Verizon took this action?
For the lulz.
a copyright holder shouldn't have to make themselves known to anyone, regardless of the reason.
Then why should I support laws that grant them a copyright at all, permit a copyright to continue existing, or allow the copyright holder to enjoy legal remedies such as money damages and injunctions?
Copyright is meant to serve the public interest, by incentivizing the creation and publication of works that otherwise would not be created and published, while encumbering the public with minimal (preferably no) restrictions as to those works, as measured in both the scope of the restrictions and their duration.
The public doesn't benefit by granting copyrights to authors who didn't require them, or by granting copyrights which are broader or last longer than are absolutely necessary, or where the benefit to the public of having a work created and published is less than the harm caused by the restrictions imposed on the public as to that work, even if the work would not have been created and published but for those restrictions.
It's impossible to read the mind of authors to determine whether a copyright would be necessary, but of anyone, authors are in the best position to make this judgment. If an author doesn't care about a copyright for a work, it probably isn't necessary to grant a copyright for that work. If an author does care about a copyright for a work, there's some chance it was necessary. Registration is how we have authors identify themselves so that we know who to grant copyrights to, and who not to. Frequently requiring renewals for short periods of time are also necessary so that as soon as an author loses interest in maintaining a copyright, the work can enter the public domain.
Registration and renewal are also useful for allowing third parties to know whether the work is copyrighted, if so, who to contact in order to license or purchase rights, and whether or not a person claiming to be the copyright holder actually is.
However, this does not cover posting videos online, like UCLA was doing.
That would be 110(2), but it has a number of limitations to it, such that UCLA might not have qualified for it, depending on precisely what it had been doing.
And of course, where no other exception applies, and where the use would otherwise be infringing, fair use may always be raised as a defense. It might not succeed, as not every use is necessarily a fair use, but it might succeed, as any use is potentially a fair use.
Not quite "as they see fit". There are 2 important restrictions:
* it must be limited in time
* it must be "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
There's a few more restrictions. The clause is "The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science . . . by securing for limited times to authors . . . the exclusive right to their respective writings . . . ."
So if we are to have copyrights, they must: Promote the progress of science; Be for limited times; Be granted to the authors of the works -- although this doesn't prevent the author from giving his rights away later or disclaiming them altogether; Not be granted to those who are not authors of the works, such as those who discover facts that they did not themselves create; Be exclusive in nature (i.e. a right to exclude others); Concern writings, and therefore not apply to inventions, ideas, marks, unwritten creative works (e.g. unwritten, unrecorded speeches), etc.
But as I said before, subject to a few restrictions.
Congress (who received a mandate [or if mandate is too strong a word, at least explicit permission] to do so directly from the Constitution)
Mandate is too strong a word. The Constitution empowers Congress to grant copyrights, or not, as they see fit, subject to a few restrictions, but it neither requires them to do so, nor encourages them.
This development benefits not only the huge mind-bogglingly expensive productions, but "trickles down" into the technologies that improve even the cheap camcorders that are an alternative.
Yes, I'm sure that happens sometimes. I know that Photoshop got a boost in its very early days before it was sold to Adobe, due to its use in movie special effects. On the other hand, though, the large copyright interests tend to behave in a staid, rent-seeking manner; the movie industry tried to kill home videotaping, and the record industry tried to kill portable mp3 players (and did kill DAT and Minidisc with crippling restrictions).
In fact, generally, it's been people not associated with copyright industries who have brought us the best cheap technologies. As the two groups grow together, or collude, we get crippled technologies, meant to lock users into a particular hardware platform, which is the one that has the blessings of the paranoid copyright holders. For example, while HDMI is convenient in that it reduces the number of cables needed in the vicinity of a tv (though it has some technical defects), why should it be encumbered with HDCP? It is of no benefit to the user. It benefits the copyright holders -- or at least they think it does. It benefits the major consumer electronics manufacturers, who get licensing fees from those not in the pool of companies that developed it.
Further, the increasing amounts of lockdown on hardware and software benefit the established players even more by preventing newcomers from upsetting the ancien régime. Newspapers would prefer it if people didn't blog, aggregate news, or supplant them with ebay, craigslist, yelp, etc., for example. The record industry didn't want people to get cheap digital audio gear that was useful to musicians; if you wanted to record your own music digitally and distribute it out of your trunk, you either had to fork over for 'professional' grade DAT equipment, or circumvent the 1-bit flag on SCMS to use the cheap equipment. (Earlier they had tried to ban the equipment in the US altogether, or to mandate that it be even more crippled)
I'm sure that the movie industry would be happy to avoid people getting cheap camcorders as well. Such camcorders could only be used as toys (in which case they don't benefit), or to make films outside of the system (in which case they're a threat), or for piracy (in which case they're a threat). If such things can't help them, and may harm them, of course they'll try to stop them.
But the movie industry and other "big business" art employs a lot of people in its productions, and you can include authors and other media in the equation.
Well, from a simple jobs perspective, must we have big studios and big productions, or could authors break apart into small studios with small productions, without it putting lots of people out of work? Note, incidentally, that the big studio system only occurs in some types of art. Looking on IMDB, Avatar had around 1,700 different people working on it. Meanwhile, JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books by herself.
Further, even if they can't exclusively support themselves, having it be lucrative enough to be encouraging has some value.
Oh sure, I don't mind preying upon their optimism. But then, at least as far back as Samuel Johnson, we had authors who would only write in exchange for money, and he didn't need nearly so much lucre. We could massively reduce copyright right now and only barely reduce the amount of money that can be gotten out of it, so why don't we?
Not sure what you mean. If you mean "exploit" as in to "fully utilize as a resource" then I would agree, but that doesn't seem to be what you say, since you definitely seem to mean this negatively.
No, I mean fully utilize as a resource. A dairy farmer doesn't keep a herd of cows because he likes them, he keeps them in order to get their milk at the least cost to himself, and to reap the largest reward from it. If the milk came from a magic cornuc
No, it should be free to develop software and make it available to others.
But if a contributor wants to be able to exercise the full power of copyright law in order to have the work not copied, modified, or distributed, except as he wishes, then for that he may need to pay, just like anyone else who wants similar powers.
Well, let's bear in mind that copyright hasn't got anything to do with the quality of works. Copyrights are equally available for both works of high and low quality, and offer equal amounts of protection for each. Further, there's no mechanism in copyright law to determine the quality of a work, not that there's even an objective way to do so to begin with, and not that anyone would want the government making these decisions subjectively. Copyright is about quantity, not quality.
Likewise, neither is it about works that are expensive to create. In fact, for two works of equal monetizable popularity, copyright holders will benefit more from the work that was cheaper to produce.
The goal of copyright is to promote the progress of science, by encouraging the creation and publication of as many works as possible which, but for copyright, would not be created and published, and; by imposing as few restrictions on the public as possible, in terms of both scope and duration.
If the public benefits the most by having multi-hundred-million dollar movies, and all the impositions that go with them in order to make their business model viable, then fine, I'm in favor of it. Or, if the public benefits the most by having a flood of cheap movies made by amateurs with camcorders and desktop video software, then fine, I'm in favor of it. There's no rule that says that we have to have mind-bogglingly expensive movies. Even if they are really great, if they come at too high a cost, we are literally better off without them.
it's in everyone's interest if it's feasible to support oneself through the production of art in its various forms
No, it's not. Plus, even today, it usually isn't feasible. Some people manage it. I used to support myself as an artist, although the copyrights on my works were utterly irrelevant to everyone, and I never got or needed so much as a penny from them. But usually, the stereotype of the starving artist is pretty well founded. Most authors would do a better job of supporting themselves if instead of working on their art for a given amount of time, they spent that time working a minimum wage job, instead.
So long as the art gets created and published, who cares whether the author can support himself doing it? I'm more than happy to allow the unrealistic optimism of other people to deliver to me what I want. (No surprise then, that I enjoyed buying things from Kozmo back in the day)
Now, I don't want authors to have to live in the gutter, or starve in the streets, but there's nothing special about authors; I don't want anyone to do those things. Given that an author has better odds of winning the lottery than of getting rich from their copyrights, supporting copyright as a way to help authors is an insipid idea, as it will almost never accomplish that goal. In fact, copyright is a way to exploit authors for the benefit of the public. Instead of using copyright as a crappy welfare system, real social welfare programs, open to all in need of them, should be used to help alleviate poverty.
Revolutions can be good and necessary, but a lot of them leave things worse off than they found them, so it behooves us all to be careful, thoughtful, and well-informed as we try to change the world.
I agree, but I don't think that we need a revolution. At least not as to copyright. Modest reforms will suffice. We can drastically cut copyright terms with little to no harm to authors, as most of the money that can ever be made from a copyright on a work is made very quickly upon the first publication in a given medium. E.g. movies tend to have diminishing returns every week after being released in theaters, and diminishing returns every week after being released on home video; the commercial lifespan of a daily morning newspaper is barely alive after lunch, and dead after dinner -- so what do they need such long copyrights for? We can limit copyright to works where it has actively been sought, rather than idiotically handing them out whether they're wanted or not
What about corporate crime or accidentally released code?
Frankly, I'd still want registrations, but if it is someone else's fault that the work was made public, they'd need to be liable for damages.
Or open source? In order to maintain the GPL every revision must be copyrighted, otherwise the changes are in the public domain regardless of what the license says.
OSS would not be exempted. If it is important to the developers that the software be open sourced and that the license on it (e.g. the GPL) be enforceable by means of copyright, then they can register and renew. If they don't care enough (which seems unlikely), then why should I?
Incidentally, this raises the issue of another traditional formality that needs strengthening: deposit. For software, a requirement of copyright ought to be providing the Copyright Office with a complete copy of the software's code, formatted, and with such supplementary information, as the Copyright Office shall require, so that the software can be understood and modified by a person having ordinary skill in the art, so that the work might 1) be more valuable to the public while copyrighted (in much the same way that a copyrighted song can inspire a new style of music by musicians that listen to it, without this constituting infringement), and 2) be more valuable to the public after the term expires, by making it reasonably possible that it could be copied, altered, adapted, but still be viable. While this isn't free software during the copyright period, it is at least inspectable, and that's an improvement.
And how is this different from opt-out?
Because it is opt-in to copyright. If an author fails to opt-in, or if the copyright holder fails to continually renew their opt-in, the work enters the public domain.
True, if Google wanted to scan a copyrighted work, they'd still need to find an applicable exception to copyright, such as fair use, or get permission from the author. But this would massively reduce the number of works still under copyright, because most authors wouldn't care to copyright their works at all, or to maintain the copyright. And for those works that were copyrighted, there would be contact information for the copyright holder that was much more likely to be up to date, allowing Google to more easily contact them if it sought permission.
So.. everytime you commit changes to a VCS, you pay $1 to register that snippet of code?
Only if you want to try to copyright it (if too minor, it might not be copyrightable) and if it would certainly enter the public domain if not registered (cf. unpublished development inside a business, eventually resulting in a single finished work being published).
And presumably, only if you can't have multiple changes covered under a single registration as a group registration or as a single work.
Remember, the goal is not to make things difficult on authors. Rather, the goal is to ensure that copyrights are only granted for eligible works, with specificity as to what constitutes the work, and only upon the explicit request of the author. In this way we avoid granting copyrights unthinkingly, and unnecessarily.
Also note that there is a lot more countries than just one.
Well, I'm only interested in reforms in the US. If other countries want to reform their own laws, which may involve their own formalities, that's fine with me. Each country should have the copyright laws that are best for its own people; there's no need for uniformity, so long as citizens and non-citizens are treated identically. I would only hope that the countries of the world would try to cooperate to ensure that different formalities in different countries didn't result in mutually exclusive copyrights, forcing authors to choose one country or the other in which to be protected.
But if an author doesn't care enough about a copyright in Pottsylvania to comply with whatever formalities they have, then let the work be in the public domain there. Since copyright typically includes a right over importation, ignoring one part of the world shouldn't disadvantage authors too much in the parts of the world they care about.
The solution of course, is registration and renewal.
To get a copyright, an author must opt-in by registering with the various national copyright offices in the countries in which he seeks protection. If he fails to do this within a modest period of time (say, 1 year after the first publication of the work, anywhere in the world, where publication is taken very broadly, or 5 years after creation of the work if unpublished), the work falls into the public domain. For copyrighted works, the copyright term is very short (say, 1 year from registration), but can be extended for another term if the copyright holder renews the copyright before the current term expires; if he fails to do this, the work falls into the public domain. And the number of renewals is limited depending on the class of work (e.g. software might have a maximum copyright length of 5 years, while a movie might have a maximum length of 20 years), letting the work fall into the public domain when it can no longer be renewed and the last term expires.
The forms for registration and renewal would always require the applicant to provide up-to-date contact information. This would be further strengthened by strengthening and enlarging the notice formality, using unique IDs for works, similar to how patents are handled and patented goods are marked. Not only would third parties have a good idea who held the copyright at any given time, but they'd also have a good idea of which copyrights were involved to aid in finding the right records to begin with.
This is by no means difficult for authors. In the US, registration and renewal, by various means, were standard features of our copyright system for nearly two centuries, and we managed okay. The paperwork is roughly about as difficult as a change of address form filed with the Post Office, and in any case, authors encounter plenty of forms in their daily lives just like the rest of us, whether it's taxes, registering to vote, getting a driver's license, filling out an intake form at the doctor's office, etc. They're not children, and don't need to be coddled. There might be fees, but they should be kept to a minimum, merely to avoid having people abuse the system, rather than to raise revenue, or make the system self-supporting, or to tax authors. I'd be perfectly happy with a token $1 fee per registration or renewal.
The U.S. is only a part of the world, and it's certainly not the country you want to dictate international copyright law
I don't think that any country should dictate international copyright, or that there should even be international copyright law. Each country should implement whatever laws are best for its own people. International cooperation with regard to copyright should be limited to informally ensuring that their laws are not mutually exclusive such that an author would be unable to get copyrights in all of them, should he choose (and should they be available).
Why the hell should I care about your constitution?
If you're not an American, that's fine. But in crafting any law that applies here, it is very important.
Obviously, your constitution has been of absolutely no help.
Nowhere else seems to be doing better. The problem is one of corruption and/or indifference in lawmaking bodies, allowing industries to write the law.
Also, the restrictions on public consumption of culture you speak of evidently does not exist: you're practically drowning in cultural expressions, the majority produced in the country of perpetual copyright
Copyright must serve the public interest by encouraging authors to create and publish as many works as possible, while restricting the public as little as possible. Merely having a lot of works isn't sufficient. Works should also be as close to being in the public domain as possible while copyrighted, and enter the public domain as rapidly as possible.
Which probably means you're not exactly honest in your intensions: you simply want things for free.
Well, of course. That's the ultimate goal of copyright: to have as many public domain works as possible, as soon as possible. If we didn't want things for free, we wouldn't have copyright.
No, it's an entirely American feature of copyright.
Well, we got the idea from the British, who had a registration system before we did, but in any event, I never said it was commonly found around the world. I said it was essential. The vast majority of copyright laws are deeply flawed, and one of the major flaws to be found is the practice of granting copyrights automatically, rather than only granting them when requested, and requiring further requests to renew it periodically.
would demand so much in bureaucratic manpower
Not at all, as we know from having required it for most of our history. First, most authors won't bother seeking a copyright for most works, because they simply don't care about it (either at all, or for those works in particular), and who are we to issue copyrights when they aren't wanted by the people who would get them?
Second, of those authors who will seek a copyright for a particular work, history again shows that fewer and fewer renewals will be requested over time, further lessening the burden on the bureaucrats.
Third, by providing an online system for registrations and renewals (and perhaps in some cases, deposit), a lot of the work can be automated. Hardcopy forms should still be accepted, but the Copyright Office is already moving in this direction, just as the PTO already did for patent and trademark filings. This system could also be used for copyright searches.
Fourth, by requiring that copies of copyrighted works published in the US include the copyright's application or registration number (as appropriate, if there was one at the time the copy was published) in some reasonable manner, and by requiring that legal documents, demands and filings (contracts, cease and desist letters, DMCA takedown notices, civil complaints, etc.) contain that information, we can leverage the interest of parties hostile to the copyright holder to engage in error checking with regard to works that are in some way contentious. True, errors regarding a work that no one other than the author ever cares about might go uncaught, but there's little harm if so.
It really isn't any trouble at all. This isn't like the patent system, where examiners have a lot of work to do per application. Unless there's a really obvious fault, I'd expect most copyright registrations to issue.
It's an awfully long comment from someone who clearly do not understand what copyright is and what it's for,
Well, I am known for writing awfully long comments. But I think I've got a clue as to what copyright is, and what it's for. It's a government-granted monopoly, which restricts free speech, and it is intended to serve the public interest by promoting the progress of science. Only granting copyrights when requested, instead of doing so mindlessly for everything under the sun seems like a good way to serve the public interest to me.
When you buy the CD, you buy the right to listen to the song in perpetuity. You don't buy the right to make copies and give them to anyone who asks.
You've got it wrong, actually.
Everyone has a natural right to make copies of works, to modify works, to distribute copies of works, to perform and display works, etc. This is known as free speech. It is why I can stage a performance of Romeo and Juliet, even charging admission, if I please, without having to be William Shakespeare or getting permission from him, directly or through some third party. I have a right to repeat the words of others.
Copyright is not a right to actually do anything. Rather it is an exclusive right; a right to exclude others from doing the things they normally are free to do with the work. Copyright allows an copyright holder to prohibit someone else from making a copy of a book, but it doesn't even give the author the right to make copies of the book himself (for example, if the book is libelous, or if it contains child pornography, etc.).
When the copyright doesn't apply, due to its limits, or when it expires, the copyright holder simply stops being able to prohibit other people from doing as they like; their inherent rights can be freely exercised, but they were always there from the get-go.
So getting back to your example: No. When I buy a CD, I buy a CD. I do not buy a right to listen, because the copyright holder lacks any copyright-based 'listening right' he can grant to me. My right to listen originates from my mere existence, and he simply lacks a right that prohibits me from exercising it, so I can do it as I see fit. I also have an inherent right to make copies and distribute them, but that he can prohibit me from doing, so long as he has a copyright he can wield against me. When the copyright evaporates due to age, or when it doesn't apply due to particular circumstances (e.g. making copies as fair use, or when allowed by the AHRA), then again, my inherent rights are in control.
Registration is an essential feature of copyright, and one which needs to be dramatically strengthened.
Authors should only receive copyrights when it benefits the public to grant them, and then those rights should only be as broad in scope and lengthy in duration as is absolutely necessary, so as to minimize the cost to the public of granting them, and thus to maximize the value to the public of a created and published work.
If an author would create a work without needing a copyright, then he shouldn't get one, because he didn't require one. If an author would create a work if he could only get a copyright lasting one year, and which only restricted reproduction, then that's all he should get, because it's all he requires. And if an author would only create a work if the copyright lasted forever, and encompassed anything even vaguely related to the work -- selling used copies, mentioning the work in a review, making a later work that had a setting or plot that is even tenuously connected -- then we ought to seriously consider whether we should grant that copyright at all; the value of the work to the public may be less than the harm caused by granting the rights necessary to incentivize the author to create and publish it.
This is all common sense: if someone offered to wash your car for free, and you knew they'd do a good job, why not let them? Paying them for a free service might be nice, but it is ultimately wasteful, and would be inappropriate if you were paying with someone else's money (or in the case of copyright, the restrictions on the rights of the public to created and published works). If someone offered to paint your house for $100, and you knew they'd do a good job, again, why not let them? But don't pay them $100,000 -- that's just wasteful. If they're happy with the low number, having had the ability to ask for more, who are you to not accept it?
Registration is useful because we cannot read the minds of authors so as to know precisely how little copyright they will accept and be satisfied with; instead we let authors tell us outright by periodically opting in to the system. When we had registrations, most authors didn't bother to get copyrights for the works that they created and published. This was good for the public, since we got works for free. The relatively small number of authors that did register, usually didn't renew. This meant that while the public had to suffer some restrictions as 'payment' for those works, we ultimately got them for free sooner than we otherwise might. And only a small number of authors did rewnew, which was annoying, but ultimately acceptable.
Given that copyright is merely an economic incentive to authors (it can't make you famous, it can't cause you to be inspired, there are ways to make money other than copyrights, even today), and given that the vast majority of creative works have no copyright-related economic value, and that of the small number that do, their value is usually realized quickly after publication in a given medium, and that only a truly minute handful of works have lasting economic value, we could easily reduce the length of a copyright term to a year, and the maximum length of copyright if annually renewed to fifteen years, and we would pretty certainly see no reduction whatsoever in the number of works created. (Copyright is concerned with quantity, by the way, since the government is unable to judge quality, which is largely a matter of taste, and we wouldn't want it to try in this matter, anyway)
Now, copyright registrations should be trivial for authors to obtain. The form is already about as easy as the change of address form you fill out with the post office when you move. The registration fee is quite low. So long as it isn't absolutely free and automatic -- so as to avoid outright abuse -- I'm happy for it to be easy, to be available in many languages, and for the Copyright Office to assist authors around the world in obtaining copyrights. It isn't meant to harm authors, just to get them to identify them