You can easily move them from one device to another - the DRM simply attempts to ensure that you do not copy it to more than one device at a time (note that this also makes lending possible)....
except for library books (which are possible thanks to ePub's DRM, btw)
Lending books, whether done by individuals or by lending libraries is entirely possible without DRM. Indeed, it is probably easier, since you don't have to waste time and effort implementing a ridiculous DRM system, nor is it necessary for both parties to have devices and books that support it, nor are you saddled with inane requirements imposed by third parties which are apt to cripple the usefulness of the loan (particularly since it is not in the interests of book publishers to permit lending at all).
Well, I don't know about Denmark, but in the US at least, copyright involves several different exclusive rights. One of them is distribution, another one is reproduction. It is entirely possible to infringe on a copyright in the US by making copies without distributing them. It may be less likely to be noticed and litigated, but it is no less infringing.
Take a look at 17 USC 101 and 106 for useful definitions and the main exclusive rights compromising a US copyright, if you're interested.
I think if we lived in a world where we had high precision multi-material 3D printers or Star Trek type replicators, we probably would have laws that copy protect physical objects.
Maybe, but should we? If we made enough replicators so that everyone could have enough to eat, we would drive most farmers, ranchers, and professional cooks out of business. But I'd rather put them out of work than have people starve -- and at least the farmers et al wouldn't go hungry either.
We have copy protection for information because it is so easy to copy, yet it is acknowledged by us humans to be valuable and most of us recognise that the creator should get first dibs on his idea.
That's not a good enough reason. If something is valuable, and if its value does not diminish when widely distributed (the Mona Lisa is just as good a painting whether one person looks at it or a million people do), then we should distribute as widely as possible so that as many people as possible can enjoy that value, if they're interested in doing so.
Copyrights and patents are meant to serve the public interest, not private interests. We promote the progress of science and the useful arts by causing works to be created and published, and inventions to be invented, disclosed, and brought to market, which otherwise would not have been, and by placing those works and inventions in the public domain where they can be used and enjoyed by the greatest number of people for the least cost.
The mechanism we use for accomplishing this goal -- public domain works and inventions -- is to grant a temporary monopoly so that they are created, invented, etc. in the first place, if they would otherwise not have been. Granting monopolies to reward creators and inventors is not the goal of the system; indeed, as a mere means to an end, and one which causes harm to the public unless outweighed by the public benefit of having new works and inventions which are minimally protected and swiftly enter the public domain, we ought to never grant such rewards unless it benefits the public more to do so than if we did not.
Here's an example: Until about 20 years ago, architectural works were not copyrightable in the United States. Yet many buildings were created and erected. Granting copyrights on buildings has not increased the number of buildings created and built. There have been absolutely zero benefits to the public regarding architecture which are attributable to copyright, as opposed to improvements in materials engineering, computer aided design, the availability of money for building projects, etc. We could abolish architectural copyrights tomorrow and see no decline in the field as a result (of course external factors like the financial collapse will impact architecture, but it would do so anyway).
Architectural works should not be eligible for copyright because the public is not left better off with architectural copyrights than without them, and the public interest is the only issue to consider. Likewise, no type of work, whether computer programs, musical compositions, or books, should be eligible for copyright unless the public is better of suffering the embarrassment of a copyright than otherwise, and the specific scope and duration of the copyright, the remedies for infringement, etc. likewise leave the public better off than some other option.
Copyrights and patents need to be justified and looked at very carefully. It is the height of foolishness to just grant them willy-nilly, or to consider mere authors or inventors as more important than society at large.
From the tone of the article, it seems like the courthouse maintained an unprotected access point. The article talks about it being available in the streets immediately surrounding the building. There is a huge leap from that to being an ISP.
Oh, I don't know.
There is a safe harbor (17 USC 512(a)) that protects service providers from being liable for indirect infringement on the basis that one of their users directly infringed, and the service provider (by providing Internet service) helped. The definition of an eligible service provider (subsection (k)(1)(A)) is:
[T]he term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user's choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received
Granted, they will have to have met the conditions required by subsection (i), but this is not particularly difficult. Given that there still are no "standard technical measures" and likely never will be, it's basically just a matter of having a policy for offenders in place, and not utterly ignoring it (though it may be possible to get away with mostly ignoring it).
So by providing the access point, they're a service provider. If they met the low standard for eligibility in 512(i), they're protected by the safe harbor. They may not have done that -- I haven't heard either way -- but how is this a huge leap?
I am an American, and I got rid of my car and instead I walk, take public transit, ride a bike, and use cars that are available to me as a member of a car-sharing organization. It works very well, in fact, and it saves me quite a lot of money.
I think that it would be very appropriate to re-engineer our urban and suburban areas so that cars are generally unnecessary and undesirable, and to encourage various car sharing arrangements rather than to have so many individually owned cars, which, as you point out, are usually idle wastes of space.
Some artists do keep producing work even when it doesn't make them any money. Look at Van Gogh, who only ever sold one painting in his life. I was an artist before I went back to school, and I supported myself comfortably, but copyrights never mattered to me one bit. I made my money by selling my labor (which I still do as a lawyer). Other artists make money selling specific copies, without copyright or the lack thereof being an issue, because some copies are more valuable than others, despite the work contained within being the same in both. Compare the market price of an original Picasso painting to a picture-postcard of the same thing; the former commands the higher price, and copyright is not a factor.
Copyright is just one incentive to create works. It isn't the only one, isn't the only economic one, and isn't the most important one.
You just spent a little bit of your life creating that post here on Slashdot, but I bet you didn't do so with the intention of making money from it, and that you would have done so even if it were not copyrightable. Someone other than copyright incentivized you.
Meh. The goal of copyright is to find the exact minimum amount of copyright that produces the maximum public benefit (as measured by the most works created and published with the fewest & shortest-lived, or no, restrictions on the public) so that we can get the most bang for our copyright buck, as it were.
Zero copyright is a valid position to consider. If nothing else it is our baseline. Copyright that produces a greater public benefit than we have with no copyright is at least better than nothing. Copyright that produces a worse public benefit than if there were no copyright would be worse than nothing.
If circumstances are such that there is no possible copyright that would be better than no copyright, we should abolish the entire thing; that would be our best option.
I don't think we're currently there, but abolition is certainly not "entirely wrong."
Well, all literature produced before 1710 in England (or later dates elsewhere) was written without the benefit of copyright. It got written somehow. This is evidence that it is possible.
Did those authors make a living at it? Who cares! The public doesn't benefit from having authors exist. Rather, it benefits from having books written and published for the public to read. Authors are just a necessary evil in the much more important business of getting books. If the books would just spontaneously appear, it would make things much easier.
This is even recognized in copyright law. Authors don't get money for existing. In fact, they don't even get money for creating works (since this would be abused). Authors only get a potential reward for creating works, and it is left up to the market to place a value on that reward. An author who is idle gets to go hungry. An author who only makes flops also goes hungry, because despite having a copyright, no one will buy copies. Only the popular author gets tangible success.
Since more works are better than fewer, and since works take time to create, it may benefit the public to make it possible for authors to make a living at creating works, in addition to holding down a regular job while creating works on the side, or finding a way to make money from their art (e.g. selling their labor, selling specific copies rather than exploiting their copyright, etc.). But ultimately it is the public that is important here, and it shouldn't be forgotten. Giving authors too much of a reward at public expense would be worse than giving them too little.
Including those that have been "stolen" by their *living* authors? That would be the most radical public domain position I've ever heard.
It's extremely conservative, actually, by which I mean, it is traditional. It is a term based on lifespan that is radical.
The first copyright law, the Statute of Anne, back in 1710, granted authors of works first published after the enactment of the law a term of 14 years, subject to a few other conditions. If the author was still alive at the end of that time period, he could have an additional term of 14 years. After that, regardless of whether the author was alive or dead, or rich or poor, the work entered the public domain.
The first US copyright law did the same thing. Eventually the term was extended to 28 years with an optional renewal term of 14 years, and then 28 years with an optional renewal term of 28 years. It wasn't until 1978 that copyright terms in the US had anything to do with the lifespan of the author, and frankly, it was a huge mistake. Copyright terms should be wholly predictable, and easy to determine without having to track down the author to check on whether he's dead, and if so, when he died.
Most authors, incidentally, didn't bother to get copyrights at all -- which meant the work was in the public domain from the moment it was published -- or didn't bother to renew their copyrights.
This isn't at all surprising. A copyright is an economic incentive for authors to create and publish works, but it isn't the only incentive (or economic incentive) that exists for authors to do so. For example, I bet you a dollar that you would have written your post here even if it were not copyrightable; the opportunity to respond publicly was your incentive. As it happens, for the vast majority of works, their copyrights are more economically valuable at the date of publication in some medium than afterwards.
Consider a movie. When it is first released in theaters, it has a big opening weekend, but each successive week probably has a lower attendance, partially because people who wanted to see it have seen it, and partially because new movies push it out of venues. It gets released in second-run theaters, and again, it is there for a while, but ultimately gets pushed out. It gets released on pay per view, in rental stores and home video, premium cable channels, basic cable channels, broadcast channels, etc.
Eventually, it has been released in every practical medium available, and only a trickle of money can ever be expected to flow from it. The trickle -- especially coming so long afterwards, given the time value of money (a dollar now is more valuable than a dollar years from now) -- is not enough to have incentivized the author. It was the initial rush of money that did it.
This may take a long time (a algebra textbook) or a short time (a daily newspaper is fishwrap by the end of the day) but it is a certainty. Usually the vast majority of a work's economic value will be realized within a couple of years, tops.
This being the case, why should we grant long copyrights -- even lifelong -- when the only part the author is apt to care about comes along quite rapidly?
There are exceptions -- works that aren't valuable initially, or that have long-lasting value -- but they're as rare as winning the lottery. They are not what we ought to shape our policy around.
As for the widows and orphans argument (that authors need copyrights to survive them so as to provide for their family) it is completely bogus. First, because recently made works would survive, given a term of years, rather than a life term. Second, because works made long ago are likely of no material value anymore, and it is insulting and ineffective to give the surviving family a mere pittance, since that's all that the work is worth on the market. Third, because most works are utterly without economic value ever; betting the fortunes of one's widow and orphans on the success of a work is as foolish as giving them a box full of lottery tickets i
Well, there is a connection in that the effect of copyright as a whole must be to serve the public interest. This includes the length of terms as well as the ease of enforcement, the available remedies, etc. We certainly should not encourage copyright holders to sue for infringement of their rights any more or less than the amount that would produce the most optimal outcome for the public.
But even without publishers, creative people that are producing copyright materials deserve something for their efforts.
No, they don't.
Authors aren't entitled to copyrights. Copyrights are intended to serve the public interest; if the public would be best served by not granting them at all, then that would be the appropriate policy. If we do grant copyrights -- with the scope and length of the copyright again based upon what would best serve the public interest -- then it is appropriate to grant them to the authors of works, rather than some third party.
But even then, a copyright has no intrinsic value whatsoever. All a copyright does, really, is work like a lens; whatever the economic value of the work is, it merely focuses it for the convenience of the copyright holder. If a work has no economic value at all, then the copyright is worthless. Whether a work will have economic value depends on the market. No author can justifiably demand or force anyone to care about his work. This is part of the genius of copyright; rather than dispense money to authors directly, it only lets them take a larger piece of the pie than they otherwise might get, where the size of the pie is determined by the market.
Sure, hundreds of years ago their compensation was in the form of patronage.
Well, let's back up.
The purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science by 1) encouraging the creation and publication of works, and 2) having no restrictions, or at least restrictions that are minimal in scope and length, as to what the public can do with those works.
But since copyright didn't exist until 1710 (and even then, only in England), and since many works are known to have been created prior to then, there must be other incentives for authors to create things. Some authors create art for art's sake, or for fame, or to sell copies (as opposed to exploiting a copyright), or incidentally to selling their creative services as labor, etc.
Some of these involve economic gain, but not all of them. Plenty of people create works without concern for related economic gain. For example, all of us here write posts on Slashdot, but none of us expect to get paid for them.
Copyright is meant to encourage authors to create and publish works which they otherwise would not. It is one way of making money as an author, but it is not the only way, or the most important way. Even today, many professional authors do not exploit their copyrights, but make a living. I didn't need copyrights when I was working as an artist, and I supported myself comfortably.
Patronage is perfectly legitimate, and is quite popular even today. There's no need to disparage it. After all, copyright does not guarantee quality. It is solely interested in quantity. As I said, copyright leaves the economic value of a work's copyright up to the market. If a work is popular, it is worth a lot; if it is unpopular, it not worth much. Many popular works are absolute tripe, however. You might not like the works that sprang from patronage, such as Michelangelo's David, but the basis for how they were funded doesn't inherently make them worse than, say, 'Twilight.'
And just as copyright doesn't eliminate all the other incentives for creation and publication, so too is copyright not indispensible for art. There would be popular art, as opposed to commissioned art, even without copyright. Folk songs are a good example. Copyright might increase the number of songs out there, but there would always be some no matter what, suitable to all sorts of different tastes.
While some is good, most isn't.
That is also true of works for which a copyright is sought. Remember Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. Expensive production standards don't change this one bit. IMDB tells me that almost 600 movies were made in the US in the year 1977. I remember Star Wars, Close Encounters, Annie Hall, and Sorcerer as being pretty good. Logan's Run wasn't too hot. And most of the rest probably
A line item veto means that the person with the authority to veto can delete specific parts of a bill without vetoing the entire thing. In any event, a federal line item veto was attempted over 10 years ago, and was struck down as being unconstitutional. The President can veto an entire bill, but not selected parts thereof.
I would argue that we've had a decrease in creative works (excluding the gaming industry) as a whole since the copyright increases were established. The quality of said works has also seemingly diminished in direct proportion to the length and breadth of copyright applied to the works.
Well, copyright only looks at quantity, not quality. Quality is, after all, subjective, and it's the last thing that we want the government involved in, at least with regard to granting copyrights.
As for quantity, I think that while there has been an uptick, it is probably not all that attributable to copyright. Technological improvements are more significant, as are some other factors. I don't think there's been a decline.
I would dare say where are all of the good artists hiding at?
Oh, that's nothing to do with copyright. The trend in the visual arts for some time now has been to produce crap -- unattractive, devoid of significant (or any) meaning, and intended only to be enjoyed by people in the art world, rather than the general public. Architecture has had the same thing going on since the 1930's or so.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, all else being equal, more creative works are better than fewer. But the public benefits not only from having as many creative works made and published, but from having those works be in the public domain as soon as possible (if not immediately), and if we have copyrights at all then the copyrights should be as minimal as possible in terms of scope and duration.
For example, there's nothing special about the current amount of copyright. It's not the most we could have, or the least, it's just a point on the spectrum. I'm an artist, and I for one am not incentivized by the current amount of copyright to create my Moon art (where I perform massive amounts of construction on the Moon to make it more aesthetically appealing). I demand far more strong copyrights -- in fact, my incentive to create it ought to be that I get to be King of the World for the rest of my natural life.
Apparently, I don't get the massive expansion of copyright I want, since while encouraging me to create and publish my art is favored by public policy, I want too great a reward for it, and the public is ultimately better off without my art, than having it and the cost that it takes to get it.
The same principle is true now. There were plenty of books and records and tv shows and movies prior to 1978, which means that the old copyright law, which provided less protection than the current one, must've been sufficient. We have not had a huge increase in the number of works created and published since then which is attributable to copyright law (as opposed to improvements in technology, the state of the economy, etc.).
So it seems that for the last several decades, we have been paying too much in copyright in exchange for creative works. We should pay less. If some artists are unwilling to create, but not too many are unwilling, then fine. We'll be sorry to lose them, but we are better off without acceding to their demands.
Civil copyright infringement is virtually always a strict liability offense. It's a bit like speeding (it doesn't matter if you didn't know what the speed limit was) or statutory rape (even if a minor tells you they are over the age of consent, it doesn't matter).
As for the provision the earlier poster cited, 17 USC 504(c)(2) it is of little use. When an infringement suit is for statutory damages, the range is $750 to $30,000 per work infringed (n.b. not per infringement). Being a so-called 'innocent infringer' merely lowers the minimum damages to $200 from $750. It is rare to be eligible for such low damages, though. If there is a copyright notice on the work that meets the requirements of 17 USC 401 (something like "Copyright 2009 Author's Name"), then the infringer cannot even get the reduction in the range for damages.
On the other hand, it is quite easy to be eligible for intentional infringement, which raises the maximum damages from $30,000 to $150,000.
There is an excellent case about infringement and web pages that I'd like to quote, as it is pertinent. I've cleaned it up a bit:
Do those who browse the websites infringe plaintiff's copyright?
The first question, then, is whether those who browse any of the three infringing websites are infringing plaintiff's copyright. Central to this inquiry is whether the persons browsing are merely viewing the Handbook (which is not a copyright infringement), or whether they are making a copy of the Handbook (which is a copyright infringement). See 17 U.S.C. 106.
"Copy" is defined in the Copyright Act as: "material objects . . . in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. 101. "A work is fixed' . . . when its . . . sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Id.
When a person browses a website, and by so doing displays the Handbook, a copy of the Handbook is made in the computer's random access memory (RAM), to permit viewing of the material. And in making a copy, even a temporary one, the person who browsed infringes the copyright. [Footnote 5] See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511, 518 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that when material is transferred to a computer's RAM, copying has occurred; in the absence of ownership of the copyright or express permission by licence, such an act constitutes copyright infringement); Marobie-Fl., Inc. v. National Ass'n of Fire Equip. Distrib., 983 F. Supp. 1167, 1179 (N.D. Ill. 1997) (noting that liability for copyright infringement is with the persons who cause the display or distribution of the infringing material onto their computer); see also Nimmer on Copyright 8.08(A)(1) (stating that the infringing act of copying may occur from "loading the copyrighted material . . . into the computer's random access memory (RAM)"). Additionally, a person making a printout or re-posting a copy of the Handbook on another website would infringe plaintiff's copyright.
Footnote 5: Although this seems harsh, the Copyright Act has provided a safeguard for innocent infringers. Where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages. . .." 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2).
Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc., 75 F. Supp. 2d 1290, 1294, (D. Utah 1999)
Enjoy, and remember section 401's effect on 504(c)(2).
He's not giving people a license to it (which would conflict with the publisher's exclusive license); he's just promising not to sue.
The only power a copyright confers is a right to sue. Therefore, a license is nothing more than a promise not to sue. So it appears that he is offering a license.
Either copyright should apply equally to all works, or it should apply to none,
I disagree. We should be careful in determining which classes of works we should grant copyrights to, and which we should not, and what the maximum lengths of the terms for various classes of works should be.
This is because copyright is meant to be an incentive to create and publish works, but as minimally restrictive upon the public as possible in scope, and of minimal length so that the work enters the public domain as quickly as possible.
Ideally a copyright would be exactly the bare minimum that was required to get the author to create his work; this might not be what the author would want, but what the author could live with. Unfortunately, the Copyright Office lacks the large number of mind readers they'd need to do that.
But we can still get fairly close.
We know that copyright is merely an economic incentive. A copyright won't make an author famous or well respected or anything. It doesn't even guarantee wealth; like a lens it merely focuses some of the wealth that can be derived from a work, with the actual amount determined by the market. Thus a copyright on a flop is just as powerful as a copyright on a smash hit, but the flop has less money to concentrate to begin with. Copyright isn't even the only economic incentive; plenty of authors get paid for their labor without needing copyrights, and plenty of authors can sell specific copies of works without needing copyrights to protect them (e.g. anyone who could and would buy a painting from Picasso was not going to buy a cheap poster as a substitute; they wanted a specific copy, not any copy).
We know also that most works have no copyright-related economic value at all. Of the few that do, most are of modest value, and most of that value is concentrated in the first little while after publication in a given medium. For example, a movie has most of its ticket sales on its opening weekend. Each week thereafter, sales usually die down. Eventually it no longer sells enough tickets to remain in the first run theater. It goes to the second run theater and again, has brisk sales at first, and then winds down. It goes to Pay Per View, same thing. It is released on home video for rental and sales, and again the same thing. It goes to premium cable networks, then basic cable networks, then broadcast networks. Eventually it's lucky if someone wants to show it as the late night movie at 4 am.
All works go through this sooner or later. A daily newspaper is only good for birdcages or fishwrapping as soon as the next day; a basic math textbook can last for decades. Most works hang out somewhere in between. A work that has lasting popularity is as rare as a winning lottery ticket, and even it has a cycle to it (I have a copy of Star Wars, if I buy another copy, it'll be a while).
So since copyright incentivizes authors according to the money they can make, and since most of the money a work will ever make is made pretty quickly, with just how quickly varying based on what kind of work it is (book, sound recording, movie, newspaper, computer program, etc.) we can vary the term length based on the kind of work and thus provide almost as much incentive as we do now, but at a far lower cost to the public by reducing term lengths, so that the work is in the public domain sooner.
So first we need to require authors to apply for copyrights for their finished or published works, rather than just getting them automatically (I'm fine with modest protection to unpublished works in progress, so that the author need not fear someone running away with his manuscript, but even that should have some limits, and be no substitute for a real copyright on a published work). This way authors that are not incentivized by copyright at all will probably fail to apply, even though it should be quite easy, and the public can reap the rewards immediately. Authors who are incentivized by copyright will likely care enough to fill in the simple form and pay the tok
And their Copyright Act of 1790 said the following:
- for the encouragement of learning - limited term of 14 years with 14 year extension if the *original* author was still alive
Well, actually the author had to take steps to renew the copyright; otherwise it would expire at the end of the first 14 year term. And in fact, for as long as the US had a system of renewal terms (1790-1978) most authors failed to do so, indicating that they didn't even want a copyright of the greatest possible length, since it certainly was no great burden to get it.
- libraries, colleges, and private individuals were not subject to the copyright (i.e. fair use)
No, IIRC, the 1790 Act applied to everyone. But if there were individuals who were reprinting a book for their own personal use, probably no one would notice.
- was only for expensive works like books, not incidentals like maps or charts
Expense had nothing to do with it, and it expressly covered maps, charts, and books.
The reason to grant a copyright is to provide an incentive, in addition to the already-present 'natural' incentives (e.g. art for art's sake) to encourage the creation and publication of works that otherwise wouldn't be created or published, but at minimal cost to the public, and so as to ultimately enlarge the public domain.
The first Congress felt that authors and cartographers needed some help, that's all.
This is the kind of copyright law we should have today, not the perpetual copyright that lasts ~100 years (five generations). When the original laborer who created the work dies, then the copyright should die as well.
No, I'd disagree, and anyway, that's not what the 1790 Act did. The Act gave a 14 year term to a living author. If he was still alive, he could renew for another 14 years. But if he died in year 15, the renewal term didn't get cut short. Copyright terms, whatever they are, should have a fixed maximum term of years, completely unrelated to the life of the author, broken up into a number of renewal terms so that if the copyright holder stops caring sooner, the public can benefit sooner.
As Jefferson said "the Earth is for the living not the dead," and laws exist to serve the current generation not previous generations.
No, federal copyright law simply does not address whether a particular transaction is a sale of goods, a sale of goods subject to terms put forth after the goods and payment were exchanged, or if it was a contractual matter and not a sale at all. The court cannot look to copyright for the answer; it just isn't there. It is a matter of state law. Given that federal courts apply state law all the time, it shouldn't be a big deal. And it would be wrong to wait for a second attempt at updating the UCC. The court has to deal with the law on the books, not what might someday occur. In any case, it likely wouldn't involve UCITA anyhow; only two states adopted it, several others enacted laws to protect their people from it, and it is generally (rightly) considered a failure and far too generous to business.
Incidentally, aside from that it is self evident that one can sell software in an ordinary sales transaction, and thus convey to the buyer a property interest in the copy of the software, just like selling a book, Congress already decided that such sales can occur when they enacted 17 USC 117, which refers to that sort of thing.
Go to the US Copyright Office webpage -- www.copyright.gov -- and read through circulars 50 and 56a. As for verification, there generally isn't any, but committing fraud against the copyright office isn't in the interest of the copyright claimant, even if only discovered later.
Yes, I also thought that was an odd thing to say. While this case is about copyright, and therefore federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction, the contract law and sales law that it should be looking at will all be from the relevant state(s). Certainly, the leading cases on this issue have all been based heavily on the UCC, which is state law.
I suppose Congress could make some policy here, but they haven't yet, which leaves it to the states.
Well, in Grant's day -- and even up until the late 1970's -- copyrights simply lasted for a term of years, with an optional renewal. Whether the author died during the term or not was entirely irrelevant. So yes, while it is a good idea for a copyright to be able to survive the author, it is a bad idea for a copyright's term length to have anything at all to do with the life of the author.
Better for copyrights to be predictable: they last for so many years from some initial date, such as the first publication of the work. Any unpredictable elements should a) be in the hands of the author, b) reduce the length of the copyright from the predictable maximum, rather than enlarge it. For example, we might grant a copyright for 2 years, where the copyright holder can opt renew it for another two years in the last six months, if he fills out a form and pays a token fee to indicate his interest. This could be done repeatedly up until the predictable maximum term length, at which point the copyright would expire. If the author failed to renew -- or failed to register in the first place -- the work would simply enter the public domain sooner than later.
I think it is very wrong to think of copyrights as a means for helping widows and orphans. The stark reality is that most creative works have no copyright-related economic value whatsoever. The few that have such value usually have very little, and that is mostly had straight away, with little left to be wrung out after a span of hours to weeks to months to years. The odds of writing a book that is a long-lasting and substantial financial success are roughly on par with winning the lottery. We would be appalled, and rightly so, at anyone who suggested that a person who wanted to support his wife and children after he died should buy lottery tickets. Well, in the vast majority of cases, an author who tried to write a book to accomplish the same purpose would be just as big a fool.
General problems -- like how to help provide for your surviving family after you have died -- demand general solutions. After all, we all face these problems, and anyway, most authors will not be able to help on the strength of their writing. A better solution than copyright to provide for widows and orphans would be saving and investing wisely, taking out life insurance policies, and promoting a social welfare system as a safety net. This way, everyone's widows and orphans can be helped out, rather than only those of successful authors.
And as for Grant himself, let's remember, he lost his money by putting it in a Ponzi scheme. If he'd been more responsible, he would not have needed to gamble on writing a book. A book that was largely successful because he had been a prominent general and president. But we can't all be war-winning generals and presidents, so let's not pretend that widows and orphans are sound reasons for copyrights. It's just a pathetic appeal to our emotions. Copyright needs to be rational.
Not the original intent ("to promote useful arts").
A minor nit: Copyrights are meant to promote the progress of science. The useful arts is what patents are meant to promote the progress of. 'Science' back in the late 18th century, meant something more like general knowledge. The useful arts, however, meant applied technology, basically. You can still see some hints of the latter meaning, in that patents protect state of the art technology, where the inventions are useful (an invention that doesn't work, like a perpetual motion machine, is useless, therefore unpatentable) but you can't get a patent if your invention was anticipated by prior art, and of course the invention must be disclosed so as to be able to be practiced by a person having ordinary skill in the art. As for copyrightable creative works, they not only don't have to be useful, but in some cases if they are useful, they cannot be copyrighted!
She copy/pasted a large portion of the book, and copycatting is very different from "saying it first/second".
No, I think you're just misunderstanding the earlier poster. By 'saying it second' he likely means repeating what someone else has said by copying from them, as opposed to independently saying what coincidentally happens to be the same thing.
Free speech does not give one a blanket right to abuse/use other people's property for personal benefit without permission or payment.
Well, I'd dispute the use of the word 'property' there. Let's stick with 'creative works,' in which case, yes, that's precisely the sort of thing that a right of free speech has to do with. For example, if I have a copy of Shakespeare's plays, and I can abuse them by bowdlerizing them, or I can use them by performing them verbatim, or even just reprinting them and selling copies. My right of free speech permits me to do this, regardless of the fact that I didn't write those plays. I don't need permission, and I don't need to pay.
When we grant copyrights, we are temporarily ceding part of our right of free speech. Given how dreadfully important free speech is, surely we wouldn't make such a grant lightly. Nor would we likely do so unless there were some public purpose which was better served by making the grant than by not, and where the size of the grant served that purpose better than a grant of some greater or lesser size.
What purpose do you think would be so important as to justify this? How might we fine-tune copyright so as to best serve that purpose?
A hint: The public purpose is very direct, very self-serving; the means of promoting it is very indirect, however, and may benefit others in the process.
These authors spend several years of their lives creating these novels and many decades mastering the art and craft of writing.
Well, they're not obligated to. If an author can crank out a brilliant novel in the space of a week, with no practice at all, he is no more and no less deserving of a copyright than any other author. Copyright law doesn't care about how much work an author does. In fact, the Constitution prohibits rewarding an author with a copyright merely for his hard work.
And just like doctors or lawyers, they want a fair return on that investment.
Oh, I'd be perfectly happy getting an unfairly large reward on no investment at all. Don't feel troubled to do otherwise on my account.;)
Copyright ensures that people who can write good books get paid so they don't have to find a real job working in a supermarket or other manual labor.
Copyright ensures no such thing. It encourages authors to create works of all levels of quality with the hope that, if a particular work is popular, the copyright on that work can be exploited to make money. There's no policy in favor of good works over bad; the government cannot and should not make such decisions. There's no guarantee that an author will make money; a good, but unpopular work can be a flop, and authors can always mismanage their affairs. And certainly no end of authors have had to work at real jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know where you are, but this is not true in the US at least.
You can easily move them from one device to another - the DRM simply attempts to ensure that you do not copy it to more than one device at a time (note that this also makes lending possible). ...
except for library books (which are possible thanks to ePub's DRM, btw)
Lending books, whether done by individuals or by lending libraries is entirely possible without DRM. Indeed, it is probably easier, since you don't have to waste time and effort implementing a ridiculous DRM system, nor is it necessary for both parties to have devices and books that support it, nor are you saddled with inane requirements imposed by third parties which are apt to cripple the usefulness of the loan (particularly since it is not in the interests of book publishers to permit lending at all).
Well, I don't know about Denmark, but in the US at least, copyright involves several different exclusive rights. One of them is distribution, another one is reproduction. It is entirely possible to infringe on a copyright in the US by making copies without distributing them. It may be less likely to be noticed and litigated, but it is no less infringing.
Take a look at 17 USC 101 and 106 for useful definitions and the main exclusive rights compromising a US copyright, if you're interested.
I think if we lived in a world where we had high precision multi-material 3D printers or Star Trek type replicators, we probably would have laws that copy protect physical objects.
Maybe, but should we? If we made enough replicators so that everyone could have enough to eat, we would drive most farmers, ranchers, and professional cooks out of business. But I'd rather put them out of work than have people starve -- and at least the farmers et al wouldn't go hungry either.
We have copy protection for information because it is so easy to copy, yet it is acknowledged by us humans to be valuable and most of us recognise that the creator should get first dibs on his idea.
That's not a good enough reason. If something is valuable, and if its value does not diminish when widely distributed (the Mona Lisa is just as good a painting whether one person looks at it or a million people do), then we should distribute as widely as possible so that as many people as possible can enjoy that value, if they're interested in doing so.
Copyrights and patents are meant to serve the public interest, not private interests. We promote the progress of science and the useful arts by causing works to be created and published, and inventions to be invented, disclosed, and brought to market, which otherwise would not have been, and by placing those works and inventions in the public domain where they can be used and enjoyed by the greatest number of people for the least cost.
The mechanism we use for accomplishing this goal -- public domain works and inventions -- is to grant a temporary monopoly so that they are created, invented, etc. in the first place, if they would otherwise not have been. Granting monopolies to reward creators and inventors is not the goal of the system; indeed, as a mere means to an end, and one which causes harm to the public unless outweighed by the public benefit of having new works and inventions which are minimally protected and swiftly enter the public domain, we ought to never grant such rewards unless it benefits the public more to do so than if we did not.
Here's an example: Until about 20 years ago, architectural works were not copyrightable in the United States. Yet many buildings were created and erected. Granting copyrights on buildings has not increased the number of buildings created and built. There have been absolutely zero benefits to the public regarding architecture which are attributable to copyright, as opposed to improvements in materials engineering, computer aided design, the availability of money for building projects, etc. We could abolish architectural copyrights tomorrow and see no decline in the field as a result (of course external factors like the financial collapse will impact architecture, but it would do so anyway).
Architectural works should not be eligible for copyright because the public is not left better off with architectural copyrights than without them, and the public interest is the only issue to consider. Likewise, no type of work, whether computer programs, musical compositions, or books, should be eligible for copyright unless the public is better of suffering the embarrassment of a copyright than otherwise, and the specific scope and duration of the copyright, the remedies for infringement, etc. likewise leave the public better off than some other option.
Copyrights and patents need to be justified and looked at very carefully. It is the height of foolishness to just grant them willy-nilly, or to consider mere authors or inventors as more important than society at large.
From the tone of the article, it seems like the courthouse maintained an unprotected access point. The article talks about it being available in the streets immediately surrounding the building. There is a huge leap from that to being an ISP.
Oh, I don't know.
There is a safe harbor (17 USC 512(a)) that protects service providers from being liable for indirect infringement on the basis that one of their users directly infringed, and the service provider (by providing Internet service) helped. The definition of an eligible service provider (subsection (k)(1)(A)) is:
Granted, they will have to have met the conditions required by subsection (i), but this is not particularly difficult. Given that there still are no "standard technical measures" and likely never will be, it's basically just a matter of having a policy for offenders in place, and not utterly ignoring it (though it may be possible to get away with mostly ignoring it).
So by providing the access point, they're a service provider. If they met the low standard for eligibility in 512(i), they're protected by the safe harbor. They may not have done that -- I haven't heard either way -- but how is this a huge leap?
I am an American, and I got rid of my car and instead I walk, take public transit, ride a bike, and use cars that are available to me as a member of a car-sharing organization. It works very well, in fact, and it saves me quite a lot of money.
I think that it would be very appropriate to re-engineer our urban and suburban areas so that cars are generally unnecessary and undesirable, and to encourage various car sharing arrangements rather than to have so many individually owned cars, which, as you point out, are usually idle wastes of space.
Some artists do keep producing work even when it doesn't make them any money. Look at Van Gogh, who only ever sold one painting in his life. I was an artist before I went back to school, and I supported myself comfortably, but copyrights never mattered to me one bit. I made my money by selling my labor (which I still do as a lawyer). Other artists make money selling specific copies, without copyright or the lack thereof being an issue, because some copies are more valuable than others, despite the work contained within being the same in both. Compare the market price of an original Picasso painting to a picture-postcard of the same thing; the former commands the higher price, and copyright is not a factor.
Copyright is just one incentive to create works. It isn't the only one, isn't the only economic one, and isn't the most important one.
You just spent a little bit of your life creating that post here on Slashdot, but I bet you didn't do so with the intention of making money from it, and that you would have done so even if it were not copyrightable. Someone other than copyright incentivized you.
Meh. The goal of copyright is to find the exact minimum amount of copyright that produces the maximum public benefit (as measured by the most works created and published with the fewest & shortest-lived, or no, restrictions on the public) so that we can get the most bang for our copyright buck, as it were.
Zero copyright is a valid position to consider. If nothing else it is our baseline. Copyright that produces a greater public benefit than we have with no copyright is at least better than nothing. Copyright that produces a worse public benefit than if there were no copyright would be worse than nothing.
If circumstances are such that there is no possible copyright that would be better than no copyright, we should abolish the entire thing; that would be our best option.
I don't think we're currently there, but abolition is certainly not "entirely wrong."
Well, all literature produced before 1710 in England (or later dates elsewhere) was written without the benefit of copyright. It got written somehow. This is evidence that it is possible.
Did those authors make a living at it? Who cares! The public doesn't benefit from having authors exist. Rather, it benefits from having books written and published for the public to read. Authors are just a necessary evil in the much more important business of getting books. If the books would just spontaneously appear, it would make things much easier.
This is even recognized in copyright law. Authors don't get money for existing. In fact, they don't even get money for creating works (since this would be abused). Authors only get a potential reward for creating works, and it is left up to the market to place a value on that reward. An author who is idle gets to go hungry. An author who only makes flops also goes hungry, because despite having a copyright, no one will buy copies. Only the popular author gets tangible success.
Since more works are better than fewer, and since works take time to create, it may benefit the public to make it possible for authors to make a living at creating works, in addition to holding down a regular job while creating works on the side, or finding a way to make money from their art (e.g. selling their labor, selling specific copies rather than exploiting their copyright, etc.). But ultimately it is the public that is important here, and it shouldn't be forgotten. Giving authors too much of a reward at public expense would be worse than giving them too little.
Including those that have been "stolen" by their *living* authors? That would be the most radical public domain position I've ever heard.
It's extremely conservative, actually, by which I mean, it is traditional. It is a term based on lifespan that is radical.
The first copyright law, the Statute of Anne, back in 1710, granted authors of works first published after the enactment of the law a term of 14 years, subject to a few other conditions. If the author was still alive at the end of that time period, he could have an additional term of 14 years. After that, regardless of whether the author was alive or dead, or rich or poor, the work entered the public domain.
The first US copyright law did the same thing. Eventually the term was extended to 28 years with an optional renewal term of 14 years, and then 28 years with an optional renewal term of 28 years. It wasn't until 1978 that copyright terms in the US had anything to do with the lifespan of the author, and frankly, it was a huge mistake. Copyright terms should be wholly predictable, and easy to determine without having to track down the author to check on whether he's dead, and if so, when he died.
Most authors, incidentally, didn't bother to get copyrights at all -- which meant the work was in the public domain from the moment it was published -- or didn't bother to renew their copyrights.
This isn't at all surprising. A copyright is an economic incentive for authors to create and publish works, but it isn't the only incentive (or economic incentive) that exists for authors to do so. For example, I bet you a dollar that you would have written your post here even if it were not copyrightable; the opportunity to respond publicly was your incentive. As it happens, for the vast majority of works, their copyrights are more economically valuable at the date of publication in some medium than afterwards.
Consider a movie. When it is first released in theaters, it has a big opening weekend, but each successive week probably has a lower attendance, partially because people who wanted to see it have seen it, and partially because new movies push it out of venues. It gets released in second-run theaters, and again, it is there for a while, but ultimately gets pushed out. It gets released on pay per view, in rental stores and home video, premium cable channels, basic cable channels, broadcast channels, etc.
Eventually, it has been released in every practical medium available, and only a trickle of money can ever be expected to flow from it. The trickle -- especially coming so long afterwards, given the time value of money (a dollar now is more valuable than a dollar years from now) -- is not enough to have incentivized the author. It was the initial rush of money that did it.
This may take a long time (a algebra textbook) or a short time (a daily newspaper is fishwrap by the end of the day) but it is a certainty. Usually the vast majority of a work's economic value will be realized within a couple of years, tops.
This being the case, why should we grant long copyrights -- even lifelong -- when the only part the author is apt to care about comes along quite rapidly?
There are exceptions -- works that aren't valuable initially, or that have long-lasting value -- but they're as rare as winning the lottery. They are not what we ought to shape our policy around.
As for the widows and orphans argument (that authors need copyrights to survive them so as to provide for their family) it is completely bogus. First, because recently made works would survive, given a term of years, rather than a life term. Second, because works made long ago are likely of no material value anymore, and it is insulting and ineffective to give the surviving family a mere pittance, since that's all that the work is worth on the market. Third, because most works are utterly without economic value ever; betting the fortunes of one's widow and orphans on the success of a work is as foolish as giving them a box full of lottery tickets i
Well, there is a connection in that the effect of copyright as a whole must be to serve the public interest. This includes the length of terms as well as the ease of enforcement, the available remedies, etc. We certainly should not encourage copyright holders to sue for infringement of their rights any more or less than the amount that would produce the most optimal outcome for the public.
But even without publishers, creative people that are producing copyright materials deserve something for their efforts.
No, they don't.
Authors aren't entitled to copyrights. Copyrights are intended to serve the public interest; if the public would be best served by not granting them at all, then that would be the appropriate policy. If we do grant copyrights -- with the scope and length of the copyright again based upon what would best serve the public interest -- then it is appropriate to grant them to the authors of works, rather than some third party.
But even then, a copyright has no intrinsic value whatsoever. All a copyright does, really, is work like a lens; whatever the economic value of the work is, it merely focuses it for the convenience of the copyright holder. If a work has no economic value at all, then the copyright is worthless. Whether a work will have economic value depends on the market. No author can justifiably demand or force anyone to care about his work. This is part of the genius of copyright; rather than dispense money to authors directly, it only lets them take a larger piece of the pie than they otherwise might get, where the size of the pie is determined by the market.
Sure, hundreds of years ago their compensation was in the form of patronage.
Well, let's back up.
The purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science by 1) encouraging the creation and publication of works, and 2) having no restrictions, or at least restrictions that are minimal in scope and length, as to what the public can do with those works.
But since copyright didn't exist until 1710 (and even then, only in England), and since many works are known to have been created prior to then, there must be other incentives for authors to create things. Some authors create art for art's sake, or for fame, or to sell copies (as opposed to exploiting a copyright), or incidentally to selling their creative services as labor, etc.
Some of these involve economic gain, but not all of them. Plenty of people create works without concern for related economic gain. For example, all of us here write posts on Slashdot, but none of us expect to get paid for them.
Copyright is meant to encourage authors to create and publish works which they otherwise would not. It is one way of making money as an author, but it is not the only way, or the most important way. Even today, many professional authors do not exploit their copyrights, but make a living. I didn't need copyrights when I was working as an artist, and I supported myself comfortably.
Patronage is perfectly legitimate, and is quite popular even today. There's no need to disparage it. After all, copyright does not guarantee quality. It is solely interested in quantity. As I said, copyright leaves the economic value of a work's copyright up to the market. If a work is popular, it is worth a lot; if it is unpopular, it not worth much. Many popular works are absolute tripe, however. You might not like the works that sprang from patronage, such as Michelangelo's David, but the basis for how they were funded doesn't inherently make them worse than, say, 'Twilight.'
And just as copyright doesn't eliminate all the other incentives for creation and publication, so too is copyright not indispensible for art. There would be popular art, as opposed to commissioned art, even without copyright. Folk songs are a good example. Copyright might increase the number of songs out there, but there would always be some no matter what, suitable to all sorts of different tastes.
While some is good, most isn't.
That is also true of works for which a copyright is sought. Remember Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. Expensive production standards don't change this one bit. IMDB tells me that almost 600 movies were made in the US in the year 1977. I remember Star Wars, Close Encounters, Annie Hall, and Sorcerer as being pretty good. Logan's Run wasn't too hot. And most of the rest probably
A line item veto means that the person with the authority to veto can delete specific parts of a bill without vetoing the entire thing. In any event, a federal line item veto was attempted over 10 years ago, and was struck down as being unconstitutional. The President can veto an entire bill, but not selected parts thereof.
I would argue that we've had a decrease in creative works (excluding the gaming industry) as a whole since the copyright increases were established. The quality of said works has also seemingly diminished in direct proportion to the length and breadth of copyright applied to the works.
Well, copyright only looks at quantity, not quality. Quality is, after all, subjective, and it's the last thing that we want the government involved in, at least with regard to granting copyrights.
As for quantity, I think that while there has been an uptick, it is probably not all that attributable to copyright. Technological improvements are more significant, as are some other factors. I don't think there's been a decline.
I would dare say where are all of the good artists hiding at?
Oh, that's nothing to do with copyright. The trend in the visual arts for some time now has been to produce crap -- unattractive, devoid of significant (or any) meaning, and intended only to be enjoyed by people in the art world, rather than the general public. Architecture has had the same thing going on since the 1930's or so.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, all else being equal, more creative works are better than fewer. But the public benefits not only from having as many creative works made and published, but from having those works be in the public domain as soon as possible (if not immediately), and if we have copyrights at all then the copyrights should be as minimal as possible in terms of scope and duration.
For example, there's nothing special about the current amount of copyright. It's not the most we could have, or the least, it's just a point on the spectrum. I'm an artist, and I for one am not incentivized by the current amount of copyright to create my Moon art (where I perform massive amounts of construction on the Moon to make it more aesthetically appealing). I demand far more strong copyrights -- in fact, my incentive to create it ought to be that I get to be King of the World for the rest of my natural life.
Apparently, I don't get the massive expansion of copyright I want, since while encouraging me to create and publish my art is favored by public policy, I want too great a reward for it, and the public is ultimately better off without my art, than having it and the cost that it takes to get it.
The same principle is true now. There were plenty of books and records and tv shows and movies prior to 1978, which means that the old copyright law, which provided less protection than the current one, must've been sufficient. We have not had a huge increase in the number of works created and published since then which is attributable to copyright law (as opposed to improvements in technology, the state of the economy, etc.).
So it seems that for the last several decades, we have been paying too much in copyright in exchange for creative works. We should pay less. If some artists are unwilling to create, but not too many are unwilling, then fine. We'll be sorry to lose them, but we are better off without acceding to their demands.
Civil copyright infringement is virtually always a strict liability offense. It's a bit like speeding (it doesn't matter if you didn't know what the speed limit was) or statutory rape (even if a minor tells you they are over the age of consent, it doesn't matter).
As for the provision the earlier poster cited, 17 USC 504(c)(2) it is of little use. When an infringement suit is for statutory damages, the range is $750 to $30,000 per work infringed (n.b. not per infringement). Being a so-called 'innocent infringer' merely lowers the minimum damages to $200 from $750. It is rare to be eligible for such low damages, though. If there is a copyright notice on the work that meets the requirements of 17 USC 401 (something like "Copyright 2009 Author's Name"), then the infringer cannot even get the reduction in the range for damages.
On the other hand, it is quite easy to be eligible for intentional infringement, which raises the maximum damages from $30,000 to $150,000.
There is an excellent case about infringement and web pages that I'd like to quote, as it is pertinent. I've cleaned it up a bit:
Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc., 75 F. Supp. 2d 1290, 1294, (D. Utah 1999)
Enjoy, and remember section 401's effect on 504(c)(2).
He's not giving people a license to it (which would conflict with the publisher's exclusive license); he's just promising not to sue.
The only power a copyright confers is a right to sue. Therefore, a license is nothing more than a promise not to sue. So it appears that he is offering a license.
Either copyright should apply equally to all works, or it should apply to none,
I disagree. We should be careful in determining which classes of works we should grant copyrights to, and which we should not, and what the maximum lengths of the terms for various classes of works should be.
This is because copyright is meant to be an incentive to create and publish works, but as minimally restrictive upon the public as possible in scope, and of minimal length so that the work enters the public domain as quickly as possible.
Ideally a copyright would be exactly the bare minimum that was required to get the author to create his work; this might not be what the author would want, but what the author could live with. Unfortunately, the Copyright Office lacks the large number of mind readers they'd need to do that.
But we can still get fairly close.
We know that copyright is merely an economic incentive. A copyright won't make an author famous or well respected or anything. It doesn't even guarantee wealth; like a lens it merely focuses some of the wealth that can be derived from a work, with the actual amount determined by the market. Thus a copyright on a flop is just as powerful as a copyright on a smash hit, but the flop has less money to concentrate to begin with. Copyright isn't even the only economic incentive; plenty of authors get paid for their labor without needing copyrights, and plenty of authors can sell specific copies of works without needing copyrights to protect them (e.g. anyone who could and would buy a painting from Picasso was not going to buy a cheap poster as a substitute; they wanted a specific copy, not any copy).
We know also that most works have no copyright-related economic value at all. Of the few that do, most are of modest value, and most of that value is concentrated in the first little while after publication in a given medium. For example, a movie has most of its ticket sales on its opening weekend. Each week thereafter, sales usually die down. Eventually it no longer sells enough tickets to remain in the first run theater. It goes to the second run theater and again, has brisk sales at first, and then winds down. It goes to Pay Per View, same thing. It is released on home video for rental and sales, and again the same thing. It goes to premium cable networks, then basic cable networks, then broadcast networks. Eventually it's lucky if someone wants to show it as the late night movie at 4 am.
All works go through this sooner or later. A daily newspaper is only good for birdcages or fishwrapping as soon as the next day; a basic math textbook can last for decades. Most works hang out somewhere in between. A work that has lasting popularity is as rare as a winning lottery ticket, and even it has a cycle to it (I have a copy of Star Wars, if I buy another copy, it'll be a while).
So since copyright incentivizes authors according to the money they can make, and since most of the money a work will ever make is made pretty quickly, with just how quickly varying based on what kind of work it is (book, sound recording, movie, newspaper, computer program, etc.) we can vary the term length based on the kind of work and thus provide almost as much incentive as we do now, but at a far lower cost to the public by reducing term lengths, so that the work is in the public domain sooner.
So first we need to require authors to apply for copyrights for their finished or published works, rather than just getting them automatically (I'm fine with modest protection to unpublished works in progress, so that the author need not fear someone running away with his manuscript, but even that should have some limits, and be no substitute for a real copyright on a published work). This way authors that are not incentivized by copyright at all will probably fail to apply, even though it should be quite easy, and the public can reap the rewards immediately. Authors who are incentivized by copyright will likely care enough to fill in the simple form and pay the tok
And their Copyright Act of 1790 said the following:
- for the encouragement of learning
- limited term of 14 years with 14 year extension if the *original* author was still alive
Well, actually the author had to take steps to renew the copyright; otherwise it would expire at the end of the first 14 year term. And in fact, for as long as the US had a system of renewal terms (1790-1978) most authors failed to do so, indicating that they didn't even want a copyright of the greatest possible length, since it certainly was no great burden to get it.
- libraries, colleges, and private individuals were not subject to the copyright (i.e. fair use)
No, IIRC, the 1790 Act applied to everyone. But if there were individuals who were reprinting a book for their own personal use, probably no one would notice.
- was only for expensive works like books, not incidentals like maps or charts
Expense had nothing to do with it, and it expressly covered maps, charts, and books.
The reason to grant a copyright is to provide an incentive, in addition to the already-present 'natural' incentives (e.g. art for art's sake) to encourage the creation and publication of works that otherwise wouldn't be created or published, but at minimal cost to the public, and so as to ultimately enlarge the public domain.
The first Congress felt that authors and cartographers needed some help, that's all.
This is the kind of copyright law we should have today, not the perpetual copyright that lasts ~100 years (five generations). When the original laborer who created the work dies, then the copyright should die as well.
No, I'd disagree, and anyway, that's not what the 1790 Act did. The Act gave a 14 year term to a living author. If he was still alive, he could renew for another 14 years. But if he died in year 15, the renewal term didn't get cut short. Copyright terms, whatever they are, should have a fixed maximum term of years, completely unrelated to the life of the author, broken up into a number of renewal terms so that if the copyright holder stops caring sooner, the public can benefit sooner.
As Jefferson said "the Earth is for the living not the dead," and laws exist to serve the current generation not previous generations.
Indeed.
No, federal copyright law simply does not address whether a particular transaction is a sale of goods, a sale of goods subject to terms put forth after the goods and payment were exchanged, or if it was a contractual matter and not a sale at all. The court cannot look to copyright for the answer; it just isn't there. It is a matter of state law. Given that federal courts apply state law all the time, it shouldn't be a big deal. And it would be wrong to wait for a second attempt at updating the UCC. The court has to deal with the law on the books, not what might someday occur. In any case, it likely wouldn't involve UCITA anyhow; only two states adopted it, several others enacted laws to protect their people from it, and it is generally (rightly) considered a failure and far too generous to business.
Incidentally, aside from that it is self evident that one can sell software in an ordinary sales transaction, and thus convey to the buyer a property interest in the copy of the software, just like selling a book, Congress already decided that such sales can occur when they enacted 17 USC 117, which refers to that sort of thing.
Go to the US Copyright Office webpage -- www.copyright.gov -- and read through circulars 50 and 56a. As for verification, there generally isn't any, but committing fraud against the copyright office isn't in the interest of the copyright claimant, even if only discovered later.
Yes, I also thought that was an odd thing to say. While this case is about copyright, and therefore federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction, the contract law and sales law that it should be looking at will all be from the relevant state(s). Certainly, the leading cases on this issue have all been based heavily on the UCC, which is state law.
I suppose Congress could make some policy here, but they haven't yet, which leaves it to the states.
Well, in Grant's day -- and even up until the late 1970's -- copyrights simply lasted for a term of years, with an optional renewal. Whether the author died during the term or not was entirely irrelevant. So yes, while it is a good idea for a copyright to be able to survive the author, it is a bad idea for a copyright's term length to have anything at all to do with the life of the author.
Better for copyrights to be predictable: they last for so many years from some initial date, such as the first publication of the work. Any unpredictable elements should a) be in the hands of the author, b) reduce the length of the copyright from the predictable maximum, rather than enlarge it. For example, we might grant a copyright for 2 years, where the copyright holder can opt renew it for another two years in the last six months, if he fills out a form and pays a token fee to indicate his interest. This could be done repeatedly up until the predictable maximum term length, at which point the copyright would expire. If the author failed to renew -- or failed to register in the first place -- the work would simply enter the public domain sooner than later.
I think it is very wrong to think of copyrights as a means for helping widows and orphans. The stark reality is that most creative works have no copyright-related economic value whatsoever. The few that have such value usually have very little, and that is mostly had straight away, with little left to be wrung out after a span of hours to weeks to months to years. The odds of writing a book that is a long-lasting and substantial financial success are roughly on par with winning the lottery. We would be appalled, and rightly so, at anyone who suggested that a person who wanted to support his wife and children after he died should buy lottery tickets. Well, in the vast majority of cases, an author who tried to write a book to accomplish the same purpose would be just as big a fool.
General problems -- like how to help provide for your surviving family after you have died -- demand general solutions. After all, we all face these problems, and anyway, most authors will not be able to help on the strength of their writing. A better solution than copyright to provide for widows and orphans would be saving and investing wisely, taking out life insurance policies, and promoting a social welfare system as a safety net. This way, everyone's widows and orphans can be helped out, rather than only those of successful authors.
And as for Grant himself, let's remember, he lost his money by putting it in a Ponzi scheme. If he'd been more responsible, he would not have needed to gamble on writing a book. A book that was largely successful because he had been a prominent general and president. But we can't all be war-winning generals and presidents, so let's not pretend that widows and orphans are sound reasons for copyrights. It's just a pathetic appeal to our emotions. Copyright needs to be rational.
Not the original intent ("to promote useful arts").
A minor nit: Copyrights are meant to promote the progress of science. The useful arts is what patents are meant to promote the progress of. 'Science' back in the late 18th century, meant something more like general knowledge. The useful arts, however, meant applied technology, basically. You can still see some hints of the latter meaning, in that patents protect state of the art technology, where the inventions are useful (an invention that doesn't work, like a perpetual motion machine, is useless, therefore unpatentable) but you can't get a patent if your invention was anticipated by prior art, and of course the invention must be disclosed so as to be able to be practiced by a person having ordinary skill in the art. As for copyrightable creative works, they not only don't have to be useful, but in some cases if they are useful, they cannot be copyrighted!
She copy/pasted a large portion of the book, and copycatting is very different from "saying it first/second".
No, I think you're just misunderstanding the earlier poster. By 'saying it second' he likely means repeating what someone else has said by copying from them, as opposed to independently saying what coincidentally happens to be the same thing.
Free speech does not give one a blanket right to abuse/use other people's property for personal benefit without permission or payment.
Well, I'd dispute the use of the word 'property' there. Let's stick with 'creative works,' in which case, yes, that's precisely the sort of thing that a right of free speech has to do with. For example, if I have a copy of Shakespeare's plays, and I can abuse them by bowdlerizing them, or I can use them by performing them verbatim, or even just reprinting them and selling copies. My right of free speech permits me to do this, regardless of the fact that I didn't write those plays. I don't need permission, and I don't need to pay.
When we grant copyrights, we are temporarily ceding part of our right of free speech. Given how dreadfully important free speech is, surely we wouldn't make such a grant lightly. Nor would we likely do so unless there were some public purpose which was better served by making the grant than by not, and where the size of the grant served that purpose better than a grant of some greater or lesser size.
What purpose do you think would be so important as to justify this? How might we fine-tune copyright so as to best serve that purpose?
A hint: The public purpose is very direct, very self-serving; the means of promoting it is very indirect, however, and may benefit others in the process.
These authors spend several years of their lives creating these novels and many decades mastering the art and craft of writing.
Well, they're not obligated to. If an author can crank out a brilliant novel in the space of a week, with no practice at all, he is no more and no less deserving of a copyright than any other author. Copyright law doesn't care about how much work an author does. In fact, the Constitution prohibits rewarding an author with a copyright merely for his hard work.
And just like doctors or lawyers, they want a fair return on that investment.
Oh, I'd be perfectly happy getting an unfairly large reward on no investment at all. Don't feel troubled to do otherwise on my account. ;)
Copyright ensures that people who can write good books get paid so they don't have to find a real job working in a supermarket or other manual labor.
Copyright ensures no such thing. It encourages authors to create works of all levels of quality with the hope that, if a particular work is popular, the copyright on that work can be exploited to make money. There's no policy in favor of good works over bad; the government cannot and should not make such decisions. There's no guarantee that an author will make money; a good, but unpopular work can be a flop, and authors can always mismanage their affairs. And certainly no end of authors have had to work at real jobs.