Minimum is $750, and that is tripled in case of willful infringement, which is what jury decided was the case.
No, finding that infringement was willful does not triple the minimum possible award, or the award at all. Rather, in the case of willful infringement, the maximum possible amount that can be awarded per work infringed is raised from $30,000 to $150,000.
What happened here was that the judge felt that $2,250 per work infringed was an appropriate amount. He could've set it lower if he had felt that was appropriate instead.
Well, he might have chosen to triple it, but treble damages are not part of the statute.
Willfulness merely raises the maximum amount that can be awarded per work infringed from $30,000 to $150,000. Nothing prevents a court from awarding the minimum of $750 per work infringed even for willful infringements.
If laws differed between member nations then one nation would be able to use intellectual property to manufacture their goods which was prohibited by other members thus creating an unfair advantage.
That's only unfair if the other nations' laws are themselves fair. And of course, what's fair can vary quite a lot depending on one's circumstances. You're essentially suggesting the equivalent of a flat tax, where everyone is taxed the same amount in currency, regardless of ability to pay or the ratio of one's overall income or wealth to the amount of the tax. It's generally accepted that progressive taxes are more fair, where the amount you pay is proportional to the amount you have and can afford. Why shouldn't we try a similar model here? Given that copyright laws govern importation already, which avoids the problem of arbitrage, what's so bad about this? Further, shouldn't each nation strive to enact laws that best serve its own people? I'd be happy to have Costa Rica decide for itself what sorts of copyright laws would best serve Costa Ricans, so long as the US was similarly free of pernicious influences that result in a law that isn't as good for its people as possible, whether those influences are from without or within.
Man, you know that Shakespeare fellow really didn't do ANYTHING because he didn't have copyright over his work. Nor did Van Gogh, or Chopin, or Beethoven, or...
The great thing about those works is that they were DIFFICULT TO DUPLICATE.
No, none of their works were difficult to duplicate. For example, there were plenty of pirated copies and unauthorized performances of Shakespeare during his career. And given that Shakespeare based most of his plays on preexisting works (he would've had a hard time if he had to live with our rules) and, as an actor, probably performed other people's plays without paying them, it was fair enough.
Further, while works have generally become easier to duplicate over time -- in Shakespeare's day, writing was laboriously done with quill and ink, printing with lead type -- pirates have never had the advantage over authors. At most, authors and pirates were able to duplicate works equally easily. More usually, authors and authorized publishers have had the advantage; working from better copies, working openly, being the first mover, working in bulk, etc.
Even today, authors have the advantage. A DVD factory can make discs that cost less to produce per unit than if individuals were to rip and burn their own at home. A press can make higher quality books, with good bindings, for a far lower price than you or I could by printing them out at home (especially given how overpriced ink and toner are). And even for electronic distribution, it isn't as though an author cannot distribute a pdf of a book, or mp3s of music, or an avi of a movie. He can even spare himself much of the cost by using P2P networks, where his audience distributes the work at their own expense. There's no pirate-only technology, no issue of difficulty.
And anyway, why should we stop the progress of reproduction technologies just for authors? Painters suffered greatly from the invention of photography; do you think we should've suppressed it, just to protect their livelihood? The live theater (particularly vaudeville) is a mere shadow of what it used to be, to the extent it isn't dead, due to movies and television.
Personally, I think I have more faith in authors than you do. I think they'll find a way to adapt. And to the extent that they don't, we may nevertheless be better off with fewer new works, but more freedom as to what we can do with them.
Scrabulous is an EXACT COPY of Scrabble. The board layout, the point multipliers, the letter value and distribution all identical.
All of the things you mentioned there are based on the rules of scrabble, and therefore are not copyrightable or trademarkable. They could be patented, but scrabble is old enough that any patent would've expired long ago.
Rules of a game can not be copyrighted, however 'look and feel' is, as well as the name of the game. Using a similar, even if unrelated, name will land you in trouble.
The look and feel of a game may be copyrightable, but just as easily may not be; it depends on how closely it is tied to the functional, and therefore uncopyrightable, portions of the game. And names are never copyrightable; you're thinking of trademarks, although they're not inevitably protected either.
Remember not a year ago the online game Scrabulous based of Scrable? They used all their own artwork, only copying the rules. They were successfully sued by choosing a name they argued would purposely cause confusion and liken their software to scrable. This is not legal, there is plenty of case law to show this is the result that will come out of the court case, and the article submitter specifically said this was one thing they are doing.
No, Hasbro filed suit against the Scrabulous folks in the US, but later dropped the suit after the defendants made changes instead of pursue a legal battle. This might've been successful for Hasbro, but I wouldn't call it 'successfully sued.'
As for Scrabulous, they were probably within their rights to use the name that they did.
Remember, in order to be viable, a trademark must indicate to customers that goods bearing the mark share a common source. A trademark cannot simply describe the marked goods themselves. Consider Xerox: If customers believe that XEROX is a brand of photocopier, it is a viable trademark; If, however, customers believe that XEROX is a synonym for photocopier, it is not a viable trademark. This is why Xerox spends a sizable amount of money trying to counteract this trend.
According to Hasbro, their product at issue in the Scrabulous case was the SCRABBLE-brand crossword game. That is, they contend that the name of the game with the little letter tiles, on the 15x15 board with special scoring squares at particular places as dictated by the rules of the game, etc. is 'crossword game.' But if a survey of the appropriate group of game customers revealed that they thought that the name of that game was Scrabble, the trademark would die, and the Scrabulous name would be no more objectionable than calling a checkers game Checkulous. Personally, everyone I've ever asked has said that they think the name of the game itself is Scrabble. This is a problem with having a lack of competitors making the same product.
But it would cost a lot of money to get to that point, so I don't really blame them for knuckling under.
A title is a mark, which is used in trade to associate a product with a commercial entity
It can be, but often is not.
A trademark must indicate that all so-marked goods share a common source; it cannot merely describe the good itself. The title of a particular work is merely descriptive, and doesn't indicate the source. It is only when the title describes a series of books, all sharing the same source, that the title can be protected as a mark. So if you had a book 'Foo,' you couldn't trademark the title; but if you had something like 'Foo, vol. 1 of the Quux trilogy,' along with similarly titled books 'Bar' and 'Baz,' then you could probably get protection for QUUX.
Even if we were to look at unregistered trademarks, single-work titles are at best merely descriptive of their works. Even a very fanciful name for a book is ultimately still merely descriptive because those titles refer to the specific works entitled, rather than indicating a particular source for that book, out of the many that might produce it. Even if it doesn't describe the contents of the book, it still merely describes the book itself.
Copyright policy would also prevent trademarks in the title from surviving the expiration of the book's copyright, but that's going further than we're probably interested in.
The point is that with no copyright, how is any author ever going to earn any money? As soon as a new book was published, anyone could copy it and sell it without the author getting a penny.
First, I don't recall saying that we should abolish copyrights, although that is a legitimate option. In determining whether to have copyrights, and how much copyright to have, if any, we should look only at the public interest. It is in the public interest to have as many works created and published as possible, and it is also in the public interest for the public to suffer no, or the fewest, shortest-lived restrictions on what they can do with the work (a book I can only read is less valuable to me than a book I can read and make copies of for my friends, for example). If granting some level of copyright will increase the number of works created and published, benefiting society, and will increase the amount of restrictions on the public, harming society, then we should do it if the benefit outweighs the harm, and not do it if the opposite is true. The ideal copyright law will be the one that produces the greatest public benefit for the least public harm. Unless there is literally no possible copyright law that is better than none at all, copyright law should exist in some form or another.
Whether that law is ideal for authors, however, I don't care. It might be great for them, it might be lousy for them, but what matters is the public interest.
I fail to see why I should support a law that is bad (or at least less than as good as it could be) for society, merely to help a special interest group make money through monopolies. It's not as though this is a civil rights issue, where we must protect a minority against the depredations of the majority. Right now, it seems to be the opposite, in fact!
Second, there are ways for authors to make a living and write books. Remember, copyright even as it exists today, does not guarantee that an author will earn any money as an author. The most it does is guarantee that if a work has copyright-related value above what might be eaten up by transactional costs, that the copyright holder can get that value for himself. If a book is a flop, the author has a worthless copyright. Most authors are flops, as it happens. Lots of books get written all the time, and are rejected by publishers because they're lousy books, and the publisher doesn't want to waste money on them. The author is left monetarily poorer for having written the book instead of doing something else to make money. Of books that are published, very many never turn a profit, or only turn a very modest profit (which isn't enough for the publisher), and while the author isn't left absolutely penniless, he still would've made more money if he had spent that time working at a regular job instead of writing. Yet, for all this, we still get books somehow.
Books that are a commercial success are pretty rare. Books that are a lasting commercial success (how many of the bestselling books from 1910 have you read? What about from 1960?) are as rare as winning lottery tickets.
Whether because of the monetary promise of copyright, even though it is usually unrealized, or because of other reasons -- fame, just wanting to tell a story, etc. -- authors continue to write books, usually without being professional authors that do nothing other than write, because even today it's very very difficult to make enough money as an author to do so.
We had plenty of authors before 1978, when copyright terms were considerably shorter than they are today. Have we gained more than we've lost by increasing the scope and duration of copyright? We had lots of authors before 1909, when copyrights were shorter still.
In fact, most copies of a given book only sell when first published in a particular medium. Publish in hardback, and you'll get most of your sales within anywhere from 6 to 18 months. Copyright could last forever minus a day, and you'd probably never make as much money to the end of time as you did
What can I say? I am single-minded with regard to the public interest in copyright. Please bear in mind, though, that I am not opposed to authors profiting handsomely from their copyrights. I just don't care about authors for good or for ill, when considering how copyright policy should be shaped, except to the extent that the public interest is concerned.
Meanwhile, I am pretty liberal, and I don't like poverty. If someone can't make ends meet, is starving, is homeless, etc. then I think that our society ought to help them with their immediate needs, and then help get them on their feet so that they can help themselves and others. But I don't think that this should be limited only to helping authors -- anyone in dire straits should count. And I do think that such programs ought to implemented so as to actually work, as opposed to copyright, which doesn't guarantee an author anything tangible. An author could have a copyright that was extremely broad and extremely long lasting, and still starve in the gutter because no one bought or even pirated his work. A copyright is a chance to succeed, much like a lottery ticket is a chance to get lucky; when people actually need help, it ought not to be a matter of odds.
Authors can still face difficulties in getting published.
True, but this really has more to do with a problem with how we implement copyright.
Broadly, a work is published when it is made available to the public. If the copyright system were to require as little as registration of works in order to obtain a copyright, and deposit of a couple of highest quality copies of the work, in specified formats, with supplementary material as requested (e.g. for a book, the hardcopy edition, for a painting, detailed photographs, for a sculpture, detailed photographs from many angles and information about the material it is made of, for software copies of the source and binaries, with enough comments that it could be understood and made to run, etc.) with the Library of Congress as a part of that process, then at least those copies would be available to the public during the copyright term, even if no others ever were. Eventually, the work would fall out of copyright -- something that might happen sooner if we had very short, renewable copyright terms, up to some maximum length, so that an author would frequently have to renew the copyright to maintain it, or could let it lapse by inaction -- and those copies could form the basis for more copies if anyone were interested.
Of course, authors can also keep trying to get third parties to publish a work for them (usually at the cost of some of the profits), or they can self-publish, which has never been easier than it is now.
People download and distribute music out of greed or convenience.
I agree.
But if an author creates and publishes a work in part due to the incentive of a copyright, then he was greedy; a copyright is merely a way to make money, after all. If he was incentivized wholly by other reasons, then he doesn't deserve a copyright, as it would be a wasteful restriction on the public to grant him one.
Both sides act out of greed. There's nothing particularly wrong with this.
That has nothing to do with the development of Mankind.
I disagree.
First, the more widespread a work is, the more likely it is to survive in the long term. Many books only survived to the present day because they were widely copied. Many of those copies were destroyed by accident or deliberately. So long as at least one survived to be copied again, however, the work lived on. Sadly, many works did not survive; languages died out, libraries were burned down, paper rotted away, and often we're lucky just to know some of the titles of these works that were part of the development of mankind, which were lost forever.
Second, society benefits immeasurably by having more works created and published, and by having works which are free for anyone to obtain and use as they like, including at no cost. I think we can agree that the ideal world would be one in which everyone who wanted to create and publish works could, and anyone who wanted to read those works, and possess copies, and make their own versions or adaptations or translations could. Everyone could have all or at least most of human knowledge at their fingertips, for free, ready to be used to make some more. Realistically, we can't have this. But we can strive for it at least.
Copyright is basically amoral. It's a purely utilitarian system. But if there is any morality, it is on the side of the pirates, who use and spread knowledge, and not on the side of the copyright holders, who seek to restrict access and use of their works for mere money.
It used to be that making copies of creative works was a physical task that was the domain of professionals. As such, enforcing copyrights was relatively easy.
A minor quibble: Making copies using state of the art methods was the domain of professionals. Most people didn't have their own printing press, but if you were literate and had ink, pen, paper, and time, you could still copy a book by hand. Even today, in fact, you could not compete with a CD or DVD factory if you were merely armed with a generic writable drive and recordable disks. But the modern techniques that are in the hands of ordinary people are now sufficiently good -- particularly those involving network file sharing -- that enough of the gap is closed.
Copyrights exist so that creators of creative works can be given an incentive to create. Their creations, on the whole, enrich society. That's the basic copyright bargain: You write good books and we, as a society, will insure that you can make a living doing it.
But now we've moved beyond quibbling. Copyrights exist to serve the public interest. Part of the means by which they work is to give authors an additional incentive to create and publish beyond those which are naturally present. Creation and publication are both important, as unpublished works do so little good for society that they may as well not exist. And copyright is merely an economic incentive. Other incentives include fame, art-for-art's sake, and even money unrelated to a copyright (e.g. selling original works, rather than additional copies; artistic labor as a service like any other). Sometimes those other incentives will be sufficient, as is the case for all works created before copyright existed, and for many works since. When no additional incentive is needed to encourage the creation and publication of works, it would be wasteful to grant a copyright; why pay for the cow, if you get the milk for free?
Additionally, copyrights are merely a sort of monopoly. At the expense of some waste in transactional costs, they act as a lens or funnel, focusing whatever copyright-related economic value a work has on the copyright holder. If the work is economically valueless, however -- like the typical Slashdot post -- then the copyright is valueless too. The author gets nothing other than a useless exclusive right.
An author who makes a work that flops may get a copyright, but society will not promise him a living. It's all up to the whims of the market. The vast majority of authors don't make a living based on their copyrights, in fact.
Notice that I said fairly compensated. That means that consumers of creative works (readers of books, listeners of music, watchers of movies and TV shows) pay commensurate with their consumption, and authors get paid commensurate with the relative rates of consumption.
Why is that fair? More importantly, why do we care? The goal of copyright is to serve the public interest, remember; it needn't be fair. We want as many works created and published as possible, for as few restrictions on the public as possible, in both duration and scope. So long as the public interest is maximally satisfied, why should our copyright policy care whether authors live comfortably or shiver in garrets? We should have social welfare to help the poor, whether they are authors or not. Not copyright, which is more like giving lottery tickets to only a small subgroup of people.
When that happens, the Supreme Court *MUST* hear the case(s) to resolve the discrepancy. It is one of only a few things that can force the Supreme Court to hear a case.
No, it isn't mandatory that they resolve the circuit split. It is often convenient when they do, but it is not mandatory.
If a law is respected, though occasionally broken, there's no problem, e.g. murder being a crime.
If a law is widely broken, yet even those breaking it agree that it is worthwhile, then that's not great, but it is acceptable, e.g. speed limits.
If a law is disrespected by those who should follow it, and it is not agreed that it is worthwhile (whether at all, or at least in its present form), then it should be repealed or modified so that it is more acceptable, lest disrespect for that law spread, e.g. Prohibition, the disrespect for which led to increased corruption amongst public officials, violent crime, organized crime, etc.
If a law is disrespected by those who should follow it, but it is sufficiently important, it may be appropriate for the government to force it on an unwilling populace, e.g. calling out the National Guard to help enforce desegregation.
Personally, I think that copyright presently falls into the third category; it's potentially worthwhile, but the current law needs to be massively reformed in order to make it worthy of respect. If we keep going as we have gone, it will not only fail to be respected, but it will tend to drag other, more worthy laws down with it. So it's not so bad that people break the bad law; it's the side effects of this on other laws that are the problem.
We don't have a directly democratic means of changing copyright law in the US; our federal government is a representative democracy. It would be great if we could successfully lobby to have the law changed quickly. However, we should expect and demand those we elect to office to pay attention to the public interest and to act to serve it without needing to be asked. An honest, competent legislator ought to be able to look at how much copyright law is ignored at present and understand that it needs to be changed so as to be worthy of respect.
Copyrights are protected by law, but that is endangered if the community decides that to ignore it en masse.
And? The government can only act legitimately with the consent of its people, is only empowered by us to grant copyrights in order to promote the progress of science, and should generally conform to the desires of its people unless there is an adequately important reason to do otherwise.
If the community decides to ignore copyright en masse, then we shouldn't have copyright, or at least should reform copyright to better conform to the community's wishes. (E.g. granting a copyright that could be enforced against non-natural persons, or anyone acting commercially, but not against natural persons acting non-commercially)
The collapse of the leading record store chains within a few years of one another is an example of where the grey market led to a catastrophic loss of sales.
Okay. Copyright is meant to encourage the creation and distribution of creative works when that otherwise would not occur, while minimally restricting the public, in scope and duration. It isn't meant to prop up record stores in particular.
Personally, I am hoping for more instances of the former rather than the latter.
So long as copyright law is tailored in such a way that it serves the public interest better than any alternative copyright law would, I'm happy. If lots of businesses can thrive under those circumstances, then that's great; I'm happy for them. If not, then I can't say I'd shed a tear.
Why do you assume that it's possible for us to win, or at least to avoid losing, by continuing the way we have been? Particularly since information of all sorts spreads trivially, and copyrights and patents ultimately rely on nothing more than the respect of those who increasingly are disadvantaged by them. I don't think that things will work out well unless we have a sea change, as the information economy appears to be a big sham.
Your story is about the history of copyright in England, which is not the first place copyright arose.
Well, I've never made any bones about the fact that my interest is in US copyright law, which requires some knowledge of English copyright law, since that's what influenced us. I know relatively little about what other countries do, and save to the extent that they might have some good ideas that we could crib (and with Berne being so common, they don't), I don't care what they do.
I suppose you're talking about the Venetian copyright system (as opposed to the odd grant of a patent to a printer or an author, here or there), but it doesn't work well for the point made earlier in the thread, that copyright systems came about to stop pirate printers. But IIRC, the Venetian copyright law didn't actually prohibit this until it was amended around 15 years after having originally been enacted. While it's clear that copyrights should initially be vested in authors, in order to encourage the most creation and publication of works with the least amount of restrictions on the public, that's not how it started.
Moreover, the situation you describe in England conflates a lot of history that happened over almost two centuries.
I may have a habit of writing long posts on Slashdot, but how long do you want them to be? (Also I had a dinner to go to, so I knew I couldn't go on and on and on)
But there were other countries and other models (and reasons) for copyright out there.
Assuming as axioms that governments are only legitimate if they are continually empowered by the consent of the people, and that there are certain natural human rights, such as a right to free speech, there are no copyright models I'm aware of that actually make any sense, other than a utilitarian model, which is how we do it in the US (although it's gotten rather corrupt over the last hundred-odd years). I suppose a different model might have a reason other than to promote the progress of science, but that wouldn't justify it.
You're certainly willing to try it, if you'd like, but Dastar certainly doesn't apply in this case, since we're not talking about using material in the public domain, but creation of new works using the Mickey Mouse character.
Bearing in mind that we were discussing what would happen if Steamboat Willy, the first work in which Mickey Mouse appears, were to enter the public domain, Dastar is applicable, because any new works featuring the 1928 version of Mickey Mouse would be derivative works based upon a public domain work, and therefore noninfringing.
Of course, it can't be tried yet, as Steamboat Willy is still copyrighted. But if you really wanted to engage in a test case (not regarding Mickey Mouse directly, of course), then that's certainly possible.
Well, characters cannot be copyrighted, that's true. But what are copyrighted are the works those characters appear in, with their descriptions of the characters. If Steamboat Willy falls into the public domain, the description of Mickey Mouse therein does too, allowing other people to use it. This means Mickey Mouse in black and white, with a different personality and voice than in later works, which would still be copyrighted.
As for the trademark, the Supreme Court made it clear in Dastar that trademarks are not a substitute for copyright. And following the logic in Kellogg, the expiration of the copyright could easily result in the trademark getting pulled down too.
Yes. That's usually how it is for fine artists. Of course, obscure ones don't make much at all, no matter what, but usually people who want a painting or a sculpture would prefer an original piece, rather than a poster or other reproduction.
This is why an original Van Gogh can sell for zillions of dollars, while a poster of the same painting can sell for five or ten bucks. The trick is to be alive when your work is valuable.
And then of course there was Picasso, who could command a fortune for his original pieces (if he wanted), and was notorious in his later years for doodling on a napkin to avoid paying the bill at fancy restaurants. A xerox of the napkin doodle... not so valuable, though.
Not that Mickey Mouse would actually enter the public domain - he's a trademark, and trademarks don't expire.
But trademarks are inferior to copyrights, remember. A trademark only has any life to it, when customers can expect that goods so marked all originate from some common source, with a stable level of quality. If Mickey Mouse is no longer copyrighted, then anyone can make movies, comics, books, etc. featuring that character. Then the customers for those goods cannot expect all of them to originate from some common source, and the trademark goes generic.
Mickey Mouse might remain a live trademark for goods wholly unrelated to creative works, in the way that Peter Pan is a public domain character in the US, and anyone can make a movie or play or book using the character, but there is also a Peter Pan trademark on peanut butter, and on a bus line.
If Disney loses the Mickey Mouse copyright, they lose a lot of the trademark as well.
As a lawyer, what do you think of Creative Common's CC0? Would you consider putting your posts into the public domain by that vehicle instead of your current sig?
Well, I've had my current Slashdot sig for quite some time, and it seems to work well enough for my needs. What advantage do you think I'd gain by changing?
As for Creative Commons generally, I'm not tremendously fond of it, although I am not hostile to it, or anything. While there is a place for form licenses, the only people who are apt to use them are those who 1) think about copyright, and 2) actively want to reduce the level of exclusivity they enjoy over their works, if at least temporarily. This isn't very many people. I want more. I want the people who don't think about copyright, and who don't actively want anything with regard to their works.
I would prefer to reform copyright back to an opt-in system so that all the people who don't think about copyright, and therefore would fail to register their works and request a copyright in a timely manner, don't get a copyright. It is quite sensible, as copyright is meant to serve the public good by incentivizing authors to create and publish works that they otherwise would not create and publish, while minimally restricting the public. If an author would create and publish a work without the incentive of copyright, it's contrary to copyright policy to grant him one. We can't read minds, but if an author is so lackadaisical about copyright that he would fail to take very easy measures to get one, we can probably expect that he doesn't actively want a copyright, wasn't incentivized by copyright, and therefore shouldn't get one.
This would place many more works in the public domain than we're ever going to get through CC. Plus, it would let me shorten my Slashdot sig.
I can understand how your individual comments on Slashdot touch on a wide variety of different subjects and do not necessarily coalesce cleanly into a larger book or collection. As such, the potential for you to make profit off of your comments is very low.
Perhaps I'm revealing myself to be a bit of a zealot here, but it wouldn't matter to me. While I can't read the minds of other authors, which is why a simple opt-in system is needed, I do know my own mind. I know that I was never incentivized to write any of my posts because of the economic value I might get by exploiting a copyright regarding them. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to have a copyright on them. Unfortunately, the law isn't currently opt-in on this matter, so I have to take the extra effort to disclaim copyrights. The sig makes it more convenient than cutting and pasting, at least.
From the point in time when I started actively thinking about copyright, I would only claim a copyright for myself if I were actually incentivized by it. Offhand, I can't think of any examples.
For a novelist or poet, however, there often is a large potential for commercial profit.
Depends on what you mean by a large potential, I guess. While authors may be eternal optimists, most works have no copyright related value. Even if you think of a gigantic library like the Library of Congress, or the British Library, remember that most of the works they have were published somewhere, sometime. Now for every book that gets published, think of how many that are rejected and just get abandoned, or destroyed.
No Virginia, there usually isn't a reasonable chance for commercial profit. Profitable works are rare.
And really, poets?
Aside from things like documentation or technical specifications, when (if ever) would you suggest that authors release their material into the public domain?
I would prefer that all works automatically enter the public domain unless the author specifically wants a copyright, and is willing to indicate this by performing some simple actions, such as applying for a copyright, followed by frequent renewals so as to indicate continued interest in a copyright.
A bribe is dirty money to get people in a position of power to perform a favor.
It can be. But a bribe can also be merely an inducement; think of a parent bribing a child with the promise of a sweet or a toy, in order to get him to behave.
Copyright IS a reward
A copyright has no inherent value, however. The value is set by the market, and is usually zero. In fact, it can easily be less than zero, if there is someone who would be willing to pay the copyright holder to use the work in a way that would be infringing if done without permission, but where the transactional costs are high enough to be a deterrent. It is quite rare that a copyright has any material value at all, and amazingly rare that it is quite a lot.
Frankly, a worthless reward doesn't sound like much of a reward to me. In most cases, we could give the author a bag full of empty soda cans, and they would be worth more for the deposit or scrap!
Copyright came about in the first place because third parties began copying and selling other people's books, undercutting them and driving them out of work.
Well, no.
Copyright began in England. Back in the day, the English monarchs and Parliament were often at odds, and one means of raising money without having Parliament involved was to grant monopolies. Meanwhile, there was also a lot of concern about sedition and impropriety, and so systems of censorship were established. From this unholy union emerged the stationer's copyright: Only the printers that were members of the guild were allowed to print books (authors, for example, had no right to print even their own books), the printers would collude so that no two of them were printing the same book (thus allowing the prices to be kept high due to a lack of competition), and all books had to be approved by the state before they could be printed at all. This meant that if an author wrote a book, he could neither cause it to be printed, or prevent it from being printed; the decision was left to the printer. The author could, at best, keep his manuscript secret until he could make a deal with a printer, but this wasn't always possible (either because the MS would be stolen, or because no printer would agree to anything without a chance to read and approve or reject the book).
Eventually the increasingly autocratic monarchs went too far, and the Commonwealth took over. While the monarchy eventually returned, the monopolies were viewed so badly that they were abolished or allowed to expire. The stationer's copyright expired in the 1690's.
The printers hated this, of course. They lobbied very hard for copyright -- i.e. a copyright of the printer in the work of the author -- but were unable to convince Parliament to grant them the monopoly. Granting the copyright to the author instead was something of a desperation move, but they were able to convince people that limited monopolies, carefully granted and regulated, could be in the public interest, despite the inherent risks. Thus, the modern copyright system came into being in the early 18th century. Then of course, the publishers immediately started trying to expand copyright, since, after all, a copyright is of little benefit to an author, but of great benefit to a publisher, and publishers can usually control authors, or wrest away the rights of the author.
What did not happen, however, was a dearth of copyrighted works.
Indeed, if you'd like a more modern example, let us consider architectural works. Until 1990, architectural works were not copyrightable in the United States. Architectural works created since the AWCPA have been copyrightable, although older works remain in the public domain.
Now, since you claim that No Copyright = very few new... works this means that until 1990, there should've been very few new architectural works in the US. That would be crap, however; the US has had a very rich architectural history pre-1990. Further, there should've been a great boom in the number of new ar
Slashdot Mirror
Minimum is $750, and that is tripled in case of willful infringement, which is what jury decided was the case.
No, finding that infringement was willful does not triple the minimum possible award, or the award at all. Rather, in the case of willful infringement, the maximum possible amount that can be awarded per work infringed is raised from $30,000 to $150,000.
What happened here was that the judge felt that $2,250 per work infringed was an appropriate amount. He could've set it lower if he had felt that was appropriate instead.
Well, he might have chosen to triple it, but treble damages are not part of the statute.
Willfulness merely raises the maximum amount that can be awarded per work infringed from $30,000 to $150,000. Nothing prevents a court from awarding the minimum of $750 per work infringed even for willful infringements.
If laws differed between member nations then one nation would be able to use intellectual property to manufacture their goods which was prohibited by other members thus creating an unfair advantage.
That's only unfair if the other nations' laws are themselves fair. And of course, what's fair can vary quite a lot depending on one's circumstances. You're essentially suggesting the equivalent of a flat tax, where everyone is taxed the same amount in currency, regardless of ability to pay or the ratio of one's overall income or wealth to the amount of the tax. It's generally accepted that progressive taxes are more fair, where the amount you pay is proportional to the amount you have and can afford. Why shouldn't we try a similar model here? Given that copyright laws govern importation already, which avoids the problem of arbitrage, what's so bad about this? Further, shouldn't each nation strive to enact laws that best serve its own people? I'd be happy to have Costa Rica decide for itself what sorts of copyright laws would best serve Costa Ricans, so long as the US was similarly free of pernicious influences that result in a law that isn't as good for its people as possible, whether those influences are from without or within.
No, none of their works were difficult to duplicate. For example, there were plenty of pirated copies and unauthorized performances of Shakespeare during his career. And given that Shakespeare based most of his plays on preexisting works (he would've had a hard time if he had to live with our rules) and, as an actor, probably performed other people's plays without paying them, it was fair enough.
Further, while works have generally become easier to duplicate over time -- in Shakespeare's day, writing was laboriously done with quill and ink, printing with lead type -- pirates have never had the advantage over authors. At most, authors and pirates were able to duplicate works equally easily. More usually, authors and authorized publishers have had the advantage; working from better copies, working openly, being the first mover, working in bulk, etc.
Even today, authors have the advantage. A DVD factory can make discs that cost less to produce per unit than if individuals were to rip and burn their own at home. A press can make higher quality books, with good bindings, for a far lower price than you or I could by printing them out at home (especially given how overpriced ink and toner are). And even for electronic distribution, it isn't as though an author cannot distribute a pdf of a book, or mp3s of music, or an avi of a movie. He can even spare himself much of the cost by using P2P networks, where his audience distributes the work at their own expense. There's no pirate-only technology, no issue of difficulty.
And anyway, why should we stop the progress of reproduction technologies just for authors? Painters suffered greatly from the invention of photography; do you think we should've suppressed it, just to protect their livelihood? The live theater (particularly vaudeville) is a mere shadow of what it used to be, to the extent it isn't dead, due to movies and television.
Personally, I think I have more faith in authors than you do. I think they'll find a way to adapt. And to the extent that they don't, we may nevertheless be better off with fewer new works, but more freedom as to what we can do with them.
Scrabulous is an EXACT COPY of Scrabble. The board layout, the point multipliers, the letter value and distribution all identical.
All of the things you mentioned there are based on the rules of scrabble, and therefore are not copyrightable or trademarkable. They could be patented, but scrabble is old enough that any patent would've expired long ago.
Rules of a game can not be copyrighted, however 'look and feel' is, as well as the name of the game.
Using a similar, even if unrelated, name will land you in trouble.
The look and feel of a game may be copyrightable, but just as easily may not be; it depends on how closely it is tied to the functional, and therefore uncopyrightable, portions of the game. And names are never copyrightable; you're thinking of trademarks, although they're not inevitably protected either.
Remember not a year ago the online game Scrabulous based of Scrable? They used all their own artwork, only copying the rules. They were successfully sued by choosing a name they argued would purposely cause confusion and liken their software to scrable. This is not legal, there is plenty of case law to show this is the result that will come out of the court case, and the article submitter specifically said this was one thing they are doing.
No, Hasbro filed suit against the Scrabulous folks in the US, but later dropped the suit after the defendants made changes instead of pursue a legal battle. This might've been successful for Hasbro, but I wouldn't call it 'successfully sued.'
As for Scrabulous, they were probably within their rights to use the name that they did.
Remember, in order to be viable, a trademark must indicate to customers that goods bearing the mark share a common source. A trademark cannot simply describe the marked goods themselves. Consider Xerox: If customers believe that XEROX is a brand of photocopier, it is a viable trademark; If, however, customers believe that XEROX is a synonym for photocopier, it is not a viable trademark. This is why Xerox spends a sizable amount of money trying to counteract this trend.
According to Hasbro, their product at issue in the Scrabulous case was the SCRABBLE-brand crossword game. That is, they contend that the name of the game with the little letter tiles, on the 15x15 board with special scoring squares at particular places as dictated by the rules of the game, etc. is 'crossword game.' But if a survey of the appropriate group of game customers revealed that they thought that the name of that game was Scrabble, the trademark would die, and the Scrabulous name would be no more objectionable than calling a checkers game Checkulous. Personally, everyone I've ever asked has said that they think the name of the game itself is Scrabble. This is a problem with having a lack of competitors making the same product.
But it would cost a lot of money to get to that point, so I don't really blame them for knuckling under.
A title is a mark, which is used in trade to associate a product with a commercial entity
It can be, but often is not.
A trademark must indicate that all so-marked goods share a common source; it cannot merely describe the good itself. The title of a particular work is merely descriptive, and doesn't indicate the source. It is only when the title describes a series of books, all sharing the same source, that the title can be protected as a mark. So if you had a book 'Foo,' you couldn't trademark the title; but if you had something like 'Foo, vol. 1 of the Quux trilogy,' along with similarly titled books 'Bar' and 'Baz,' then you could probably get protection for QUUX.
Check out section 1202.08 of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedures which gets into what titles are eligible for federal registration, and what are not.
Even if we were to look at unregistered trademarks, single-work titles are at best merely descriptive of their works. Even a very fanciful name for a book is ultimately still merely descriptive because those titles refer to the specific works entitled, rather than indicating a particular source for that book, out of the many that might produce it. Even if it doesn't describe the contents of the book, it still merely describes the book itself.
Copyright policy would also prevent trademarks in the title from surviving the expiration of the book's copyright, but that's going further than we're probably interested in.
The point is that with no copyright, how is any author ever going to earn any money? As soon as a new book was published, anyone could copy it and sell it without the author getting a penny.
First, I don't recall saying that we should abolish copyrights, although that is a legitimate option. In determining whether to have copyrights, and how much copyright to have, if any, we should look only at the public interest. It is in the public interest to have as many works created and published as possible, and it is also in the public interest for the public to suffer no, or the fewest, shortest-lived restrictions on what they can do with the work (a book I can only read is less valuable to me than a book I can read and make copies of for my friends, for example). If granting some level of copyright will increase the number of works created and published, benefiting society, and will increase the amount of restrictions on the public, harming society, then we should do it if the benefit outweighs the harm, and not do it if the opposite is true. The ideal copyright law will be the one that produces the greatest public benefit for the least public harm. Unless there is literally no possible copyright law that is better than none at all, copyright law should exist in some form or another.
Whether that law is ideal for authors, however, I don't care. It might be great for them, it might be lousy for them, but what matters is the public interest.
I fail to see why I should support a law that is bad (or at least less than as good as it could be) for society, merely to help a special interest group make money through monopolies. It's not as though this is a civil rights issue, where we must protect a minority against the depredations of the majority. Right now, it seems to be the opposite, in fact!
Second, there are ways for authors to make a living and write books. Remember, copyright even as it exists today, does not guarantee that an author will earn any money as an author. The most it does is guarantee that if a work has copyright-related value above what might be eaten up by transactional costs, that the copyright holder can get that value for himself. If a book is a flop, the author has a worthless copyright. Most authors are flops, as it happens. Lots of books get written all the time, and are rejected by publishers because they're lousy books, and the publisher doesn't want to waste money on them. The author is left monetarily poorer for having written the book instead of doing something else to make money. Of books that are published, very many never turn a profit, or only turn a very modest profit (which isn't enough for the publisher), and while the author isn't left absolutely penniless, he still would've made more money if he had spent that time working at a regular job instead of writing. Yet, for all this, we still get books somehow.
Books that are a commercial success are pretty rare. Books that are a lasting commercial success (how many of the bestselling books from 1910 have you read? What about from 1960?) are as rare as winning lottery tickets.
Whether because of the monetary promise of copyright, even though it is usually unrealized, or because of other reasons -- fame, just wanting to tell a story, etc. -- authors continue to write books, usually without being professional authors that do nothing other than write, because even today it's very very difficult to make enough money as an author to do so.
We had plenty of authors before 1978, when copyright terms were considerably shorter than they are today. Have we gained more than we've lost by increasing the scope and duration of copyright? We had lots of authors before 1909, when copyrights were shorter still.
In fact, most copies of a given book only sell when first published in a particular medium. Publish in hardback, and you'll get most of your sales within anywhere from 6 to 18 months. Copyright could last forever minus a day, and you'd probably never make as much money to the end of time as you did
What can I say? I am single-minded with regard to the public interest in copyright. Please bear in mind, though, that I am not opposed to authors profiting handsomely from their copyrights. I just don't care about authors for good or for ill, when considering how copyright policy should be shaped, except to the extent that the public interest is concerned.
Meanwhile, I am pretty liberal, and I don't like poverty. If someone can't make ends meet, is starving, is homeless, etc. then I think that our society ought to help them with their immediate needs, and then help get them on their feet so that they can help themselves and others. But I don't think that this should be limited only to helping authors -- anyone in dire straits should count. And I do think that such programs ought to implemented so as to actually work, as opposed to copyright, which doesn't guarantee an author anything tangible. An author could have a copyright that was extremely broad and extremely long lasting, and still starve in the gutter because no one bought or even pirated his work. A copyright is a chance to succeed, much like a lottery ticket is a chance to get lucky; when people actually need help, it ought not to be a matter of odds.
Authors can still face difficulties in getting published.
True, but this really has more to do with a problem with how we implement copyright.
Broadly, a work is published when it is made available to the public. If the copyright system were to require as little as registration of works in order to obtain a copyright, and deposit of a couple of highest quality copies of the work, in specified formats, with supplementary material as requested (e.g. for a book, the hardcopy edition, for a painting, detailed photographs, for a sculpture, detailed photographs from many angles and information about the material it is made of, for software copies of the source and binaries, with enough comments that it could be understood and made to run, etc.) with the Library of Congress as a part of that process, then at least those copies would be available to the public during the copyright term, even if no others ever were. Eventually, the work would fall out of copyright -- something that might happen sooner if we had very short, renewable copyright terms, up to some maximum length, so that an author would frequently have to renew the copyright to maintain it, or could let it lapse by inaction -- and those copies could form the basis for more copies if anyone were interested.
Of course, authors can also keep trying to get third parties to publish a work for them (usually at the cost of some of the profits), or they can self-publish, which has never been easier than it is now.
People download and distribute music out of greed or convenience.
I agree.
But if an author creates and publishes a work in part due to the incentive of a copyright, then he was greedy; a copyright is merely a way to make money, after all. If he was incentivized wholly by other reasons, then he doesn't deserve a copyright, as it would be a wasteful restriction on the public to grant him one.
Both sides act out of greed. There's nothing particularly wrong with this.
That has nothing to do with the development of Mankind.
I disagree.
First, the more widespread a work is, the more likely it is to survive in the long term. Many books only survived to the present day because they were widely copied. Many of those copies were destroyed by accident or deliberately. So long as at least one survived to be copied again, however, the work lived on. Sadly, many works did not survive; languages died out, libraries were burned down, paper rotted away, and often we're lucky just to know some of the titles of these works that were part of the development of mankind, which were lost forever.
Second, society benefits immeasurably by having more works created and published, and by having works which are free for anyone to obtain and use as they like, including at no cost. I think we can agree that the ideal world would be one in which everyone who wanted to create and publish works could, and anyone who wanted to read those works, and possess copies, and make their own versions or adaptations or translations could. Everyone could have all or at least most of human knowledge at their fingertips, for free, ready to be used to make some more. Realistically, we can't have this. But we can strive for it at least.
Copyright is basically amoral. It's a purely utilitarian system. But if there is any morality, it is on the side of the pirates, who use and spread knowledge, and not on the side of the copyright holders, who seek to restrict access and use of their works for mere money.
It used to be that making copies of creative works was a physical task that was the domain of professionals. As such, enforcing copyrights was relatively easy.
A minor quibble: Making copies using state of the art methods was the domain of professionals. Most people didn't have their own printing press, but if you were literate and had ink, pen, paper, and time, you could still copy a book by hand. Even today, in fact, you could not compete with a CD or DVD factory if you were merely armed with a generic writable drive and recordable disks. But the modern techniques that are in the hands of ordinary people are now sufficiently good -- particularly those involving network file sharing -- that enough of the gap is closed.
Copyrights exist so that creators of creative works can be given an incentive to create. Their creations, on the whole, enrich society. That's the basic copyright bargain: You write good books and we, as a society, will insure that you can make a living doing it.
But now we've moved beyond quibbling. Copyrights exist to serve the public interest. Part of the means by which they work is to give authors an additional incentive to create and publish beyond those which are naturally present. Creation and publication are both important, as unpublished works do so little good for society that they may as well not exist. And copyright is merely an economic incentive. Other incentives include fame, art-for-art's sake, and even money unrelated to a copyright (e.g. selling original works, rather than additional copies; artistic labor as a service like any other). Sometimes those other incentives will be sufficient, as is the case for all works created before copyright existed, and for many works since. When no additional incentive is needed to encourage the creation and publication of works, it would be wasteful to grant a copyright; why pay for the cow, if you get the milk for free?
Additionally, copyrights are merely a sort of monopoly. At the expense of some waste in transactional costs, they act as a lens or funnel, focusing whatever copyright-related economic value a work has on the copyright holder. If the work is economically valueless, however -- like the typical Slashdot post -- then the copyright is valueless too. The author gets nothing other than a useless exclusive right.
An author who makes a work that flops may get a copyright, but society will not promise him a living. It's all up to the whims of the market. The vast majority of authors don't make a living based on their copyrights, in fact.
Notice that I said fairly compensated. That means that consumers of creative works (readers of books, listeners of music, watchers of movies and TV shows) pay commensurate with their consumption, and authors get paid commensurate with the relative rates of consumption.
Why is that fair? More importantly, why do we care? The goal of copyright is to serve the public interest, remember; it needn't be fair. We want as many works created and published as possible, for as few restrictions on the public as possible, in both duration and scope. So long as the public interest is maximally satisfied, why should our copyright policy care whether authors live comfortably or shiver in garrets? We should have social welfare to help the poor, whether they are authors or not. Not copyright, which is more like giving lottery tickets to only a small subgroup of people.
No, Harvard may be down the street from MIT, but it is upriver.
When that happens, the Supreme Court *MUST* hear the case(s) to resolve the discrepancy. It is one of only a few things that can force the Supreme Court to hear a case.
No, it isn't mandatory that they resolve the circuit split. It is often convenient when they do, but it is not mandatory.
If a law is respected, though occasionally broken, there's no problem, e.g. murder being a crime.
If a law is widely broken, yet even those breaking it agree that it is worthwhile, then that's not great, but it is acceptable, e.g. speed limits.
If a law is disrespected by those who should follow it, and it is not agreed that it is worthwhile (whether at all, or at least in its present form), then it should be repealed or modified so that it is more acceptable, lest disrespect for that law spread, e.g. Prohibition, the disrespect for which led to increased corruption amongst public officials, violent crime, organized crime, etc.
If a law is disrespected by those who should follow it, but it is sufficiently important, it may be appropriate for the government to force it on an unwilling populace, e.g. calling out the National Guard to help enforce desegregation.
Personally, I think that copyright presently falls into the third category; it's potentially worthwhile, but the current law needs to be massively reformed in order to make it worthy of respect. If we keep going as we have gone, it will not only fail to be respected, but it will tend to drag other, more worthy laws down with it. So it's not so bad that people break the bad law; it's the side effects of this on other laws that are the problem.
We don't have a directly democratic means of changing copyright law in the US; our federal government is a representative democracy. It would be great if we could successfully lobby to have the law changed quickly. However, we should expect and demand those we elect to office to pay attention to the public interest and to act to serve it without needing to be asked. An honest, competent legislator ought to be able to look at how much copyright law is ignored at present and understand that it needs to be changed so as to be worthy of respect.
Copyrights are protected by law, but that is endangered if the community decides that to ignore it en masse.
And? The government can only act legitimately with the consent of its people, is only empowered by us to grant copyrights in order to promote the progress of science, and should generally conform to the desires of its people unless there is an adequately important reason to do otherwise.
If the community decides to ignore copyright en masse, then we shouldn't have copyright, or at least should reform copyright to better conform to the community's wishes. (E.g. granting a copyright that could be enforced against non-natural persons, or anyone acting commercially, but not against natural persons acting non-commercially)
The collapse of the leading record store chains within a few years of one another is an example of where the grey market led to a catastrophic loss of sales.
Okay. Copyright is meant to encourage the creation and distribution of creative works when that otherwise would not occur, while minimally restricting the public, in scope and duration. It isn't meant to prop up record stores in particular.
Personally, I am hoping for more instances of the former rather than the latter.
So long as copyright law is tailored in such a way that it serves the public interest better than any alternative copyright law would, I'm happy. If lots of businesses can thrive under those circumstances, then that's great; I'm happy for them. If not, then I can't say I'd shed a tear.
Why do you assume that it's possible for us to win, or at least to avoid losing, by continuing the way we have been? Particularly since information of all sorts spreads trivially, and copyrights and patents ultimately rely on nothing more than the respect of those who increasingly are disadvantaged by them. I don't think that things will work out well unless we have a sea change, as the information economy appears to be a big sham.
Your story is about the history of copyright in England, which is not the first place copyright arose.
Well, I've never made any bones about the fact that my interest is in US copyright law, which requires some knowledge of English copyright law, since that's what influenced us. I know relatively little about what other countries do, and save to the extent that they might have some good ideas that we could crib (and with Berne being so common, they don't), I don't care what they do.
I suppose you're talking about the Venetian copyright system (as opposed to the odd grant of a patent to a printer or an author, here or there), but it doesn't work well for the point made earlier in the thread, that copyright systems came about to stop pirate printers. But IIRC, the Venetian copyright law didn't actually prohibit this until it was amended around 15 years after having originally been enacted. While it's clear that copyrights should initially be vested in authors, in order to encourage the most creation and publication of works with the least amount of restrictions on the public, that's not how it started.
Moreover, the situation you describe in England conflates a lot of history that happened over almost two centuries.
I may have a habit of writing long posts on Slashdot, but how long do you want them to be? (Also I had a dinner to go to, so I knew I couldn't go on and on and on)
But there were other countries and other models (and reasons) for copyright out there.
Assuming as axioms that governments are only legitimate if they are continually empowered by the consent of the people, and that there are certain natural human rights, such as a right to free speech, there are no copyright models I'm aware of that actually make any sense, other than a utilitarian model, which is how we do it in the US (although it's gotten rather corrupt over the last hundred-odd years). I suppose a different model might have a reason other than to promote the progress of science, but that wouldn't justify it.
You're certainly willing to try it, if you'd like, but Dastar certainly doesn't apply in this case, since we're not talking about using material in the public domain, but creation of new works using the Mickey Mouse character.
Bearing in mind that we were discussing what would happen if Steamboat Willy, the first work in which Mickey Mouse appears, were to enter the public domain, Dastar is applicable, because any new works featuring the 1928 version of Mickey Mouse would be derivative works based upon a public domain work, and therefore noninfringing.
Of course, it can't be tried yet, as Steamboat Willy is still copyrighted. But if you really wanted to engage in a test case (not regarding Mickey Mouse directly, of course), then that's certainly possible.
Well, characters cannot be copyrighted, that's true. But what are copyrighted are the works those characters appear in, with their descriptions of the characters. If Steamboat Willy falls into the public domain, the description of Mickey Mouse therein does too, allowing other people to use it. This means Mickey Mouse in black and white, with a different personality and voice than in later works, which would still be copyrighted.
As for the trademark, the Supreme Court made it clear in Dastar that trademarks are not a substitute for copyright. And following the logic in Kellogg, the expiration of the copyright could easily result in the trademark getting pulled down too.
Yes. That's usually how it is for fine artists. Of course, obscure ones don't make much at all, no matter what, but usually people who want a painting or a sculpture would prefer an original piece, rather than a poster or other reproduction.
This is why an original Van Gogh can sell for zillions of dollars, while a poster of the same painting can sell for five or ten bucks. The trick is to be alive when your work is valuable.
And then of course there was Picasso, who could command a fortune for his original pieces (if he wanted), and was notorious in his later years for doodling on a napkin to avoid paying the bill at fancy restaurants. A xerox of the napkin doodle... not so valuable, though.
Not that Mickey Mouse would actually enter the public domain - he's a trademark, and trademarks don't expire.
But trademarks are inferior to copyrights, remember. A trademark only has any life to it, when customers can expect that goods so marked all originate from some common source, with a stable level of quality. If Mickey Mouse is no longer copyrighted, then anyone can make movies, comics, books, etc. featuring that character. Then the customers for those goods cannot expect all of them to originate from some common source, and the trademark goes generic.
Mickey Mouse might remain a live trademark for goods wholly unrelated to creative works, in the way that Peter Pan is a public domain character in the US, and anyone can make a movie or play or book using the character, but there is also a Peter Pan trademark on peanut butter, and on a bus line.
If Disney loses the Mickey Mouse copyright, they lose a lot of the trademark as well.
Well, there is 17 USC 104A, which removes some works from the public domain; it's not as though it can't happen.
As a lawyer, what do you think of Creative Common's CC0? Would you consider putting your posts into the public domain by that vehicle instead of your current sig?
Well, I've had my current Slashdot sig for quite some time, and it seems to work well enough for my needs. What advantage do you think I'd gain by changing?
As for Creative Commons generally, I'm not tremendously fond of it, although I am not hostile to it, or anything. While there is a place for form licenses, the only people who are apt to use them are those who 1) think about copyright, and 2) actively want to reduce the level of exclusivity they enjoy over their works, if at least temporarily. This isn't very many people. I want more. I want the people who don't think about copyright, and who don't actively want anything with regard to their works.
I would prefer to reform copyright back to an opt-in system so that all the people who don't think about copyright, and therefore would fail to register their works and request a copyright in a timely manner, don't get a copyright. It is quite sensible, as copyright is meant to serve the public good by incentivizing authors to create and publish works that they otherwise would not create and publish, while minimally restricting the public. If an author would create and publish a work without the incentive of copyright, it's contrary to copyright policy to grant him one. We can't read minds, but if an author is so lackadaisical about copyright that he would fail to take very easy measures to get one, we can probably expect that he doesn't actively want a copyright, wasn't incentivized by copyright, and therefore shouldn't get one.
This would place many more works in the public domain than we're ever going to get through CC. Plus, it would let me shorten my Slashdot sig.
I can understand how your individual comments on Slashdot touch on a wide variety of different subjects and do not necessarily coalesce cleanly into a larger book or collection. As such, the potential for you to make profit off of your comments is very low.
Perhaps I'm revealing myself to be a bit of a zealot here, but it wouldn't matter to me. While I can't read the minds of other authors, which is why a simple opt-in system is needed, I do know my own mind. I know that I was never incentivized to write any of my posts because of the economic value I might get by exploiting a copyright regarding them. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to have a copyright on them. Unfortunately, the law isn't currently opt-in on this matter, so I have to take the extra effort to disclaim copyrights. The sig makes it more convenient than cutting and pasting, at least.
From the point in time when I started actively thinking about copyright, I would only claim a copyright for myself if I were actually incentivized by it. Offhand, I can't think of any examples.
For a novelist or poet, however, there often is a large potential for commercial profit.
Depends on what you mean by a large potential, I guess. While authors may be eternal optimists, most works have no copyright related value. Even if you think of a gigantic library like the Library of Congress, or the British Library, remember that most of the works they have were published somewhere, sometime. Now for every book that gets published, think of how many that are rejected and just get abandoned, or destroyed.
No Virginia, there usually isn't a reasonable chance for commercial profit. Profitable works are rare.
And really, poets?
Aside from things like documentation or technical specifications, when (if ever) would you suggest that authors release their material into the public domain?
I would prefer that all works automatically enter the public domain unless the author specifically wants a copyright, and is willing to indicate this by performing some simple actions, such as applying for a copyright, followed by frequent renewals so as to indicate continued interest in a copyright.
Of the a
A bribe is dirty money to get people in a position of power to perform a favor.
It can be. But a bribe can also be merely an inducement; think of a parent bribing a child with the promise of a sweet or a toy, in order to get him to behave.
Copyright IS a reward
A copyright has no inherent value, however. The value is set by the market, and is usually zero. In fact, it can easily be less than zero, if there is someone who would be willing to pay the copyright holder to use the work in a way that would be infringing if done without permission, but where the transactional costs are high enough to be a deterrent. It is quite rare that a copyright has any material value at all, and amazingly rare that it is quite a lot.
Frankly, a worthless reward doesn't sound like much of a reward to me. In most cases, we could give the author a bag full of empty soda cans, and they would be worth more for the deposit or scrap!
Copyright came about in the first place because third parties began copying and selling other people's books, undercutting them and driving them out of work.
Well, no.
Copyright began in England. Back in the day, the English monarchs and Parliament were often at odds, and one means of raising money without having Parliament involved was to grant monopolies. Meanwhile, there was also a lot of concern about sedition and impropriety, and so systems of censorship were established. From this unholy union emerged the stationer's copyright: Only the printers that were members of the guild were allowed to print books (authors, for example, had no right to print even their own books), the printers would collude so that no two of them were printing the same book (thus allowing the prices to be kept high due to a lack of competition), and all books had to be approved by the state before they could be printed at all. This meant that if an author wrote a book, he could neither cause it to be printed, or prevent it from being printed; the decision was left to the printer. The author could, at best, keep his manuscript secret until he could make a deal with a printer, but this wasn't always possible (either because the MS would be stolen, or because no printer would agree to anything without a chance to read and approve or reject the book).
Eventually the increasingly autocratic monarchs went too far, and the Commonwealth took over. While the monarchy eventually returned, the monopolies were viewed so badly that they were abolished or allowed to expire. The stationer's copyright expired in the 1690's.
The printers hated this, of course. They lobbied very hard for copyright -- i.e. a copyright of the printer in the work of the author -- but were unable to convince Parliament to grant them the monopoly. Granting the copyright to the author instead was something of a desperation move, but they were able to convince people that limited monopolies, carefully granted and regulated, could be in the public interest, despite the inherent risks. Thus, the modern copyright system came into being in the early 18th century. Then of course, the publishers immediately started trying to expand copyright, since, after all, a copyright is of little benefit to an author, but of great benefit to a publisher, and publishers can usually control authors, or wrest away the rights of the author.
What did not happen, however, was a dearth of copyrighted works.
Indeed, if you'd like a more modern example, let us consider architectural works. Until 1990, architectural works were not copyrightable in the United States. Architectural works created since the AWCPA have been copyrightable, although older works remain in the public domain.
Now, since you claim that No Copyright = very few new ... works this means that until 1990, there should've been very few new architectural works in the US. That would be crap, however; the US has had a very rich architectural history pre-1990. Further, there should've been a great boom in the number of new ar