Sometimes an album is an integrated 'experience' that doesn't work as singles at all, sometimes the singles can stand alone but make more sense listened to on the album and some 'albums' are just some random unrelated songs sold as a bundle.
I agree. The album of 'Thick as a brick' is great as a cohesive whole; you'd lose a lot if you just listened to an individual track from the album. But not all albums and songs are like that.
I would think, given that a compiler -- at least any compiler I know of -- always compiles the same source into the same binary, and basically works mechanically and uncreatively, that a compiled program would be the same work as the source. There doesn't seem to be any change to the work itself, just the form it takes. A computer that natively ran the source would perform the same functions as one which requires a binary. The difference for copyright purposes strikes me as immaterial as whether a picture is in a vector or raster format, lossy or lossless, compressed or uncompressed. Or whether a book is handwritten, typed, printed, or a text file in a computer.
Remember that copyright law deals with human perceptions of works. Two instances of the same work needn't be mathematically equal in some abstruse way for them to be the same for copyright purposes.
Lets pretend that person A has made the invention first and has decided not to apply a patent for it (keeping the invention secret) and B later files the paperwork and gets granted a patent. In first-to-file system A can later come and make the patent void due to prior art but he cannot claim the patent as his own.
Actually, I don't believe that to be the case, though I could be wrong, as patents are not my field, and I'm having to rely on what I learned about them in school.
Rather, what happens is that A invents first, and diligently works on his patent application, which he typically has one year to do. During that time, B independently comes up with the same thing, and being quicker to do the paperwork, gets his application mailed in sooner. The interference cannot arise until A sends in his application, and now there is a fight as to which one of them will get the patent. A isn't being rewarded for keeping a secret, he's just being rewarded as a normal inventor, albeit a slower one than B when it comes to patent filings (which are often done right up to the time limits anyway, as I understand it)
What doesn't happen is that A can keep an invention secret yet also prevent B from getting a patent. IIRC, A would have to publicize the invention to at least some extent in order for it to be the right kind of prior art to bar B.
There is a decent-looking discussion of interferences here, which you might want to review so that you get a better idea of just what it actually means. In particular there is a section about the effect of concealment or abandonment.
As for something being simple enough that two people independently come up with it, that's just stupid. The simplicity of an invention isn't relevant, and often very good inventions are quite simple. The obviousness of an invention, OTOH, is important, but there's no reason to believe that a patent is obvious merely because two people had the same idea at the same time. That can just be coincidence. Remember that obviousness is when _non-innovative_ study of the prior art would lead you to the invention. That is, if someone with no inventive imagination whatsoever could have thought of it at the time of the invention, then it is obvious. This is often not the case.
The 'intellectual' part is not so bad, except that it still lends it an air of sophistication that it really hasn't got. It implies that everything involved is the result of the labor of the mind, but as I've said, this just isn't so. It is still a false connotation.
the 17 year term was from date of GRANT backdated to the time of filing and date of invention. That allowed all sorts of abuse by keeping the application in limbo for years then getting the patent when other people actually market devices.
I know, I just didn't want to get into it, when the nit at hand was the numerical value.
The alternative was to mimic the European and Japanese systems and make them 20 years from date of file.
No, the alternative was to adopt a sensible idea and make the patent term run from the filing date. There's no reason why the term had to be 20 years, however. It could have just as easily been any number, preferably the lowest one that still yields the greatest public benefit.
And this isn't quite ideal either, as the PTO should be willing to spend as much time examining the application as it needs to. I don't care if the applicant wants to rush, but the PTO should not do so where it would even risk the quality of the examination. Though we also should try to minimize harm to the applicant from, say, a very slow examiner. I seem to recall that there's some extensions for this (or possibly if the FDA takes their time for a patented drug... patents aren't my field), but then that introduces uncertainty.
I would hope that a clever fellow could come up with a better solution that addressed these concerns (funding the PTO out of the general fund, and having plenty of examiners would help). Terms running from filing are decent, but I'm not convinced that they're the best possible solution.
I should remind everyone that the patent system with its 20 year protection was created back when information and people traveled a lot slower.
And I should remind everyone that US patents were originally 14 years long, then 17 years long, and only recently are 20 years long (also the point from which you begin counting has changed). The original patent law, the Venetian statute of 1474, had a 10 year term.
I suppose it is possible that someone had a 20 year term a long time ago, but it wasn't an influence on us, apparently, and this is a discussion about US patent law.
No, I believe he was citing the USC. Here is 35 USC 102 in full:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless-- (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or (c) he has abandoned the invention, or (d) the invention was first patented or caused to be patented, or was the subject of an inventor's certificate, by the applicant or his legal representatives or assigns in a foreign country prior to the date of the application for patent in this country on an application for patent or inventor's certificate filed more than twelve months before the filing of the application in the United States, or (e) the invention was described in (1) an application for patent, published under section 122 (b), by another filed in the United States before the invention by the applicant for patent or (2) a patent granted on an application for patent by another filed in the United States before the invention by the applicant for patent, except that an international application filed under the treaty defined in section 351 (a) shall have the effects for the purposes of this subsection of an application filed in the United States only if the international application designated the United States and was published under Article 21(2) of such treaty in the English language; [1] or (f) he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented, or (g) (1) during the course of an interference conducted under section 135 or section 291, another inventor involved therein establishes, to the extent permitted in section 104, that before such person's invention thereof the invention was made by such other inventor and not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed, or (2) before such person's invention thereof, the invention was made in this country by another inventor who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it. In determining priority of invention under this subsection, there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception by the other.
102(b) deals with published information compromising public art. There have been many notorious examples of obscure but published information resulting in patents being invalidated, so I'm surprised that you disputed this.
Also, I'm pretty confident that the immorality rule died out for patents some time ago and is only hanging on in the world of trademarks. It shouldn't there, either, IMO. It isn't an appropriate criterion for these sorts of issues.
The prior art aspect is not changed by moving to a first-to-file system. Pretend A first conceived of an invention but B filed first. B obtains a patent. Person A cannot receive patent rights but he can defeat B's patent if he can proof his case (if he publicized his invention). If A kept it secret, then the world would be no different in regards to whether A or B got the patents because that invention was not going to go on the public domain.
That's wrong. Remember that the first-to-invent rule, where there is not an issue of prior art, only arises in the context of an interference. Thus, A is also seeking a patent on the same invention, but merely filed for the patent after B. The issue then is not whether a patent will be awarded at all, but rather to whom the patent will be awarded? Will it be awarded to A, the true inventor, or to B, the also-ran who merely happened to file some paperwork earlier?
In conclusion, the first-to-file system is meant to improve parity with the rest of the world's patent systems.
But that is not an appropriate goal of the patent system. Harmonization is not a legitimate policy at all! The purpose of the patent system is to provide the greatest benefit to the American public in the realm of inventions. Whether the rest of the world does it one way or another or all different ways is utterly irrelevant. What's important is that we do it the best way. If someone else comes up with a substantively better way, then we should learn from them, whether their way is popular or not. If someone else comes up with a substantively worse way, then we should avoid following their example, whether their way is popular or not.
Your argument boils down to that all the kids are jumping off of a cliff, so we should as well. My mother taught me better than that, and I'd imagine that yours tried to do the same with you.
The whole theory of the patent system is that it is a quid-pro-quo - the inventor releases what would otherwise-be trade secrets into the public domain; in return, society grants him 20-or-so years monopoly on that information.
The patent system is also meant to incentivize inventors into inventing and marketing inventions that they otherwise would not have, but only where the inventions is novel, nonobvious, and useful. The second guy to invent something has failed to meet the requirement of novelty.
There's also the issue that the Constitution mandates that patents shall vest in inventors. The second guy is just an also-ran; he's not the inventor.
First to invent is not only a better system, it's the only constitutional one here.
The previous poster has the right idea, he's just expressing himself poorly.
In order to be copyrightable, the subject of the sought-after copyright must be a creative work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. An ISBN fails because it is not even minimally creative, and is not a work. OTOH, a computer program (Slash, let's say) can meet the standard. It's more creative than a basically arbitrary number, it's not so minimal that it isn't even a work, it is the original work of an author (i.e. not copied from elsewhere, nor a fact merely being copied down after having been discovered), and it is fixed in a medium.
I would not, however, think that the compiler authors would have a claim at being authors of the work merely because their compiler was used. Certain prerequisites for having a joint work are not present, and more importantly, the compiler behaves mechanically. It doesn't do anything creative, and the compiler authors, not being involved in the actual compilation, can't get it to.
I'd actually say that "intellectual" is an apt descriptor, as all these things relate to the expression of ideas; ideas being the subject of all intellectual activities.
Neither trademarks, trade secrets, nor publicity rights necessarily relate to ideas or intellectual activities. The first two are commercial laws; they're more closely related to antitrust law than to copyright or patent law. The latter deals with a person's right of privacy, though is also connected with commercial law.
So you might want to try again.
Personally, as a lawyer working in some of these fields, I think that there is no reasonable umbrella term for these bodies of law, and no reason to bother trying to come up with one; people really have no need to refer to all of them together that often.
Yes, it's a superset, but it's a very bad one. Its use should be discouraged, especially given as how it is quite rare that people actually do want to refer to all the bodies of law that compromise so-called 'IP law.' (Which encompasses more than the three listed earlier in the thread)
Further, the term is quite pernicious, as it tends to deceive people into thinking that the various laws are related, and further that they are related to property law or that the subject matter of the laws are various properties. So even if you want to have a superset, you wouldn't want this one; it's misleading, probably deliberately so. It's a bit like the history behind the terms 'Bolshevik' and 'Menshevik' in Russian politics.
That's not a joke, actually. See West v. Mead (where the answer is yes, they do), and Bender v. West (where the answer is no, they don't). Probably it will end up being 'no' in light of Feist, which came out after the Mead case, and before the Bender case, but at the very least the claim has been made.
Well, there's really no such thing as 'IP law.' Really there are several unrelated, dissimilar bodies of law which are (probably deliberately) confusingly put together under a common label. I avoid the term, and instead just refer to whichever of those laws I mean. And several of them do not require intellectual effort, such as trademarks, trade secrets, and publicity rights. Copyrights and patents technically do (there has to be some act of authorship or invention), but effort is generally irrelevant, as neither protects effort (i.e. it is possible to invest huge amounts of effort in creating a work or invention, but it may nevertheless be uncopyrightable, or unpatentable).
disagree, and I disagree with Jefferson for the simple reason that neither Jefferson nor you can ignore the realities of life. The only evil would be ignoring that, and forcing everyone to follow an idealistic model of the world that doesn't fit.
Don't confuse 'necessary' with 'it's a good idea.' The world won't end if we didn't have copyright; creation and publication would not cease. So it's not necessary to have copyright, but given the great public benefits that can be had by having copyright, it's sensible to have it. Speed limits are similar in this regard. So are zoning laws.
Well I get the impression that you wish there was some kind of seperation between policy and authors benefit.
The ideal world would be that in which there was the most possible creation and publication of works, and yet no copyright. But this is unrealistic. We should try to approach it (by seeing how to get the most creation and publication for the least amount of copyright) but that's the best we can do.
Well, I don't care for 'necessary evil' because copyright is not even necessary. While Jefferson was not one of the framers, he was influential, and you'll recall that he said:
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Nor do I care for 'compromise' because we should be uncompromising in pursuing whatever copyright laws provide the greatest public benefit, without any regard as to authors, with one exception: if providing some benefit to authors resulted in an even greater benefit to the public, so that there was a net public benefit (i.e. even after we account for the cost of providing that benefit to authors) then it should be done, not because it benefits authors, but because it benefits the public. Naturally, if there is no copyright that could yield a net public benefit, then we'd be best off without any. But I don't think that's presently true.
So, while it's a mouthful, I'd suggest that the copyright should be that which yields the greatest net public benefit. And at present, it is not doing so, and might even be yielding a net public detriment!
It makes hosts not liable for user-caused copyright infringement as long as they respond to take-down notices. This is what makes sites like YouTube even legally possible.
Well, it clarifies it, at any rate. Prior to the 512 safe harbor, some ISPs had been held liable for what their users did, and some ISPs had not been. The unpredictability was bad enough that they lobbied hard for clear protection. You could have YouTube without the DMCA (and indeed, if a (b)-(d) type of ISP fails to register, they are not protected!) but it would be a lot riskier.
However they felt it was a necessary evil for society, so they reluctantly included provisions for copyright into the Constitution
This isn't entirely accurate. The framers didn't think that copyright was necessary, just that it was potentially useful. But the main reason that it's in the federal Constitution is because most of the states had already had copyright laws, and they were different, and it was a mess. It's the same reason that the commerce clause was written, along with a number of other federal powers; the states were just no good at it. Had they been able to do a good job for the few years they were at it, we probably wouldn't have federal copyright law at all.
Copyright also wasn't supposed to be a concentrated form of politico-economic power, either: it was supposed to protect the creators, so that they could continue to create, not enrich the weasels that figured out how to cheat our best and brightest out of their rights. Consequently, I don't necessarily equate "content creator" with "rightsholder".
Actually, US copyrights, and English copyright law before that, always provided for the alienability of copyrights. Thus, the exclusive rights conferred were meant to initially vest in the author, but otherwise to be held by anyone who had legitimately acquired them. You're right that 'author' and 'copyright holder' are two different things (though a single person can be both). But there's no reason for good copyright policy to especially protect authors. I agree that a lot of authors get into bad contracts, but no one compelled them to agree. It is insultingly paternalistic to insist on protecting authors from themselves. If a specific contract is unconscionable, then fine, but generally the only people who get to void almost any contract at will are children, and I don't like treating authors as though they were children.
Most of the complaining about modern copyright you hear on Slashdot revolves around the fact that it isn't a middle ground anymore, is no longer a reasonable compromise. It's now a rightsholder's paradise... and that's too bad.
Why should it be a middle ground? Copyright should be crafted to maximize the public interest. I don't mind the public giving things to authors, but it should only be done where the public winds up receiving a greater benefit than it cost them. Respecting authors as equal parties in copyright is what got us into this mess!
Because World Trade Organization membership is a package deal
And the US is a significant force in the WTO, and this wouldn't involve mandating changes for anyone else; just us. All that would be required would be to change the deal. It's doable.
Such limitations on copyright, if applied to works from all countries, would violate international copyright treaties.
Did you have a point to make there? The treaties are, it turns out, a bad idea. The US should leave them as soon as possible. This is not an uncommon opinion, either; whenever you hear someone suggest that copyright terms should be shorter than life+50 (e.g. the original 14+14 term, or some other amount) then those people are necessarily supporting exiting Berne and its ilk as well. A better policy for the US would be unilateral national treatment. Personally, I would like to see other countries do likewise, but just as US copyright policy should be up to the US, and not the rest of the world, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to tell other countries what to do.
There's also a copyright issue involved; even the developer will cease publishing and supporting the game over time, and it's likely that it will stop being compatible with modern hardware and software due to underlying changes in APIs and such.
Part of the solution to this from a legal angle (in the US at least) would be: to mandate registration for all works for which a US copyright is sought; to mandate the deposit of a full, unprotected/unencrypted copy of the software and source, plus additional comments and information, so as to enable a programmer of ordinary skill (cf. PHOSITA in the patent field) to understand and make use of it freely; and to have a very short maximum copyright term -- perhaps five years -- in recognition of the especially short commercial lifetime of software.
As much as it would be great for the original parties -- the creators of the game, the OS, the hardware, etc. -- to provide long-term support, ultimately, it's safer to not put all of our eggs in that basket. Instead we should make sure that the resources are available so that even if they're not interested, but some third party is, that the software can be kept running in one way or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes an album is an integrated 'experience' that doesn't work as singles at all, sometimes the singles can stand alone but make more sense listened to on the album and some 'albums' are just some random unrelated songs sold as a bundle.
I agree. The album of 'Thick as a brick' is great as a cohesive whole; you'd lose a lot if you just listened to an individual track from the album. But not all albums and songs are like that.
Over 400 years, actually, which is about 100 years longer than copyright has been around.
I would think, given that a compiler -- at least any compiler I know of -- always compiles the same source into the same binary, and basically works mechanically and uncreatively, that a compiled program would be the same work as the source. There doesn't seem to be any change to the work itself, just the form it takes. A computer that natively ran the source would perform the same functions as one which requires a binary. The difference for copyright purposes strikes me as immaterial as whether a picture is in a vector or raster format, lossy or lossless, compressed or uncompressed. Or whether a book is handwritten, typed, printed, or a text file in a computer.
Remember that copyright law deals with human perceptions of works. Two instances of the same work needn't be mathematically equal in some abstruse way for them to be the same for copyright purposes.
Lets pretend that person A has made the invention first and has decided not to apply a patent for it (keeping the invention secret) and B later files the paperwork and gets granted a patent. In first-to-file system A can later come and make the patent void due to prior art but he cannot claim the patent as his own.
Actually, I don't believe that to be the case, though I could be wrong, as patents are not my field, and I'm having to rely on what I learned about them in school.
Rather, what happens is that A invents first, and diligently works on his patent application, which he typically has one year to do. During that time, B independently comes up with the same thing, and being quicker to do the paperwork, gets his application mailed in sooner. The interference cannot arise until A sends in his application, and now there is a fight as to which one of them will get the patent. A isn't being rewarded for keeping a secret, he's just being rewarded as a normal inventor, albeit a slower one than B when it comes to patent filings (which are often done right up to the time limits anyway, as I understand it)
What doesn't happen is that A can keep an invention secret yet also prevent B from getting a patent. IIRC, A would have to publicize the invention to at least some extent in order for it to be the right kind of prior art to bar B.
There is a decent-looking discussion of interferences here, which you might want to review so that you get a better idea of just what it actually means. In particular there is a section about the effect of concealment or abandonment.
As for something being simple enough that two people independently come up with it, that's just stupid. The simplicity of an invention isn't relevant, and often very good inventions are quite simple. The obviousness of an invention, OTOH, is important, but there's no reason to believe that a patent is obvious merely because two people had the same idea at the same time. That can just be coincidence. Remember that obviousness is when _non-innovative_ study of the prior art would lead you to the invention. That is, if someone with no inventive imagination whatsoever could have thought of it at the time of the invention, then it is obvious. This is often not the case.
The 'intellectual' part is not so bad, except that it still lends it an air of sophistication that it really hasn't got. It implies that everything involved is the result of the labor of the mind, but as I've said, this just isn't so. It is still a false connotation.
the 17 year term was from date of GRANT backdated to the time of filing and date of invention. That allowed all sorts of abuse by keeping the application in limbo for years then getting the patent when other people actually market devices.
I know, I just didn't want to get into it, when the nit at hand was the numerical value.
The alternative was to mimic the European and Japanese systems and make them 20 years from date of file.
No, the alternative was to adopt a sensible idea and make the patent term run from the filing date. There's no reason why the term had to be 20 years, however. It could have just as easily been any number, preferably the lowest one that still yields the greatest public benefit.
And this isn't quite ideal either, as the PTO should be willing to spend as much time examining the application as it needs to. I don't care if the applicant wants to rush, but the PTO should not do so where it would even risk the quality of the examination. Though we also should try to minimize harm to the applicant from, say, a very slow examiner. I seem to recall that there's some extensions for this (or possibly if the FDA takes their time for a patented drug... patents aren't my field), but then that introduces uncertainty.
I would hope that a clever fellow could come up with a better solution that addressed these concerns (funding the PTO out of the general fund, and having plenty of examiners would help). Terms running from filing are decent, but I'm not convinced that they're the best possible solution.
Happens to all of us. Don't sweat it. Hell, I don't do patents at all, so I'm lucky to have even remembered it from school.
I should remind everyone that the patent system with its 20 year protection was created back when information and people traveled a lot slower.
And I should remind everyone that US patents were originally 14 years long, then 17 years long, and only recently are 20 years long (also the point from which you begin counting has changed). The original patent law, the Venetian statute of 1474, had a 10 year term.
I suppose it is possible that someone had a 20 year term a long time ago, but it wasn't an influence on us, apparently, and this is a discussion about US patent law.
102(b) deals with published information compromising public art. There have been many notorious examples of obscure but published information resulting in patents being invalidated, so I'm surprised that you disputed this.
Also, I'm pretty confident that the immorality rule died out for patents some time ago and is only hanging on in the world of trademarks. It shouldn't there, either, IMO. It isn't an appropriate criterion for these sorts of issues.
The prior art aspect is not changed by moving to a first-to-file system. Pretend A first conceived of an invention but B filed first. B obtains a patent. Person A cannot receive patent rights but he can defeat B's patent if he can proof his case (if he publicized his invention). If A kept it secret, then the world would be no different in regards to whether A or B got the patents because that invention was not going to go on the public domain.
That's wrong. Remember that the first-to-invent rule, where there is not an issue of prior art, only arises in the context of an interference. Thus, A is also seeking a patent on the same invention, but merely filed for the patent after B. The issue then is not whether a patent will be awarded at all, but rather to whom the patent will be awarded? Will it be awarded to A, the true inventor, or to B, the also-ran who merely happened to file some paperwork earlier?
In conclusion, the first-to-file system is meant to improve parity with the rest of the world's patent systems.
But that is not an appropriate goal of the patent system. Harmonization is not a legitimate policy at all! The purpose of the patent system is to provide the greatest benefit to the American public in the realm of inventions. Whether the rest of the world does it one way or another or all different ways is utterly irrelevant. What's important is that we do it the best way. If someone else comes up with a substantively better way, then we should learn from them, whether their way is popular or not. If someone else comes up with a substantively worse way, then we should avoid following their example, whether their way is popular or not.
Your argument boils down to that all the kids are jumping off of a cliff, so we should as well. My mother taught me better than that, and I'd imagine that yours tried to do the same with you.
The whole theory of the patent system is that it is a quid-pro-quo - the inventor releases what would otherwise-be trade secrets into the public domain; in return, society grants him 20-or-so years monopoly on that information.
The patent system is also meant to incentivize inventors into inventing and marketing inventions that they otherwise would not have, but only where the inventions is novel, nonobvious, and useful. The second guy to invent something has failed to meet the requirement of novelty.
There's also the issue that the Constitution mandates that patents shall vest in inventors. The second guy is just an also-ran; he's not the inventor.
First to invent is not only a better system, it's the only constitutional one here.
The previous poster has the right idea, he's just expressing himself poorly.
In order to be copyrightable, the subject of the sought-after copyright must be a creative work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. An ISBN fails because it is not even minimally creative, and is not a work. OTOH, a computer program (Slash, let's say) can meet the standard. It's more creative than a basically arbitrary number, it's not so minimal that it isn't even a work, it is the original work of an author (i.e. not copied from elsewhere, nor a fact merely being copied down after having been discovered), and it is fixed in a medium.
I would not, however, think that the compiler authors would have a claim at being authors of the work merely because their compiler was used. Certain prerequisites for having a joint work are not present, and more importantly, the compiler behaves mechanically. It doesn't do anything creative, and the compiler authors, not being involved in the actual compilation, can't get it to.
I'd actually say that "intellectual" is an apt descriptor, as all these things relate to the expression of ideas; ideas being the subject of all intellectual activities.
Neither trademarks, trade secrets, nor publicity rights necessarily relate to ideas or intellectual activities. The first two are commercial laws; they're more closely related to antitrust law than to copyright or patent law. The latter deals with a person's right of privacy, though is also connected with commercial law.
So you might want to try again.
Personally, as a lawyer working in some of these fields, I think that there is no reasonable umbrella term for these bodies of law, and no reason to bother trying to come up with one; people really have no need to refer to all of them together that often.
Yes, it's a superset, but it's a very bad one. Its use should be discouraged, especially given as how it is quite rare that people actually do want to refer to all the bodies of law that compromise so-called 'IP law.' (Which encompasses more than the three listed earlier in the thread)
Further, the term is quite pernicious, as it tends to deceive people into thinking that the various laws are related, and further that they are related to property law or that the subject matter of the laws are various properties. So even if you want to have a superset, you wouldn't want this one; it's misleading, probably deliberately so. It's a bit like the history behind the terms 'Bolshevik' and 'Menshevik' in Russian politics.
That's not a joke, actually. See West v. Mead (where the answer is yes, they do), and Bender v. West (where the answer is no, they don't). Probably it will end up being 'no' in light of Feist, which came out after the Mead case, and before the Bender case, but at the very least the claim has been made.
Well, there's really no such thing as 'IP law.' Really there are several unrelated, dissimilar bodies of law which are (probably deliberately) confusingly put together under a common label. I avoid the term, and instead just refer to whichever of those laws I mean. And several of them do not require intellectual effort, such as trademarks, trade secrets, and publicity rights. Copyrights and patents technically do (there has to be some act of authorship or invention), but effort is generally irrelevant, as neither protects effort (i.e. it is possible to invest huge amounts of effort in creating a work or invention, but it may nevertheless be uncopyrightable, or unpatentable).
disagree, and I disagree with Jefferson for the simple reason that neither Jefferson nor you can ignore the realities of life. The only evil would be ignoring that, and forcing everyone to follow an idealistic model of the world that doesn't fit.
Don't confuse 'necessary' with 'it's a good idea.' The world won't end if we didn't have copyright; creation and publication would not cease. So it's not necessary to have copyright, but given the great public benefits that can be had by having copyright, it's sensible to have it. Speed limits are similar in this regard. So are zoning laws.
Well I get the impression that you wish there was some kind of seperation between policy and authors benefit.
The ideal world would be that in which there was the most possible creation and publication of works, and yet no copyright. But this is unrealistic. We should try to approach it (by seeing how to get the most creation and publication for the least amount of copyright) but that's the best we can do.
some form of copyright will always be needed
No, it's not needed. It's just a good idea.
Nor do I care for 'compromise' because we should be uncompromising in pursuing whatever copyright laws provide the greatest public benefit, without any regard as to authors, with one exception: if providing some benefit to authors resulted in an even greater benefit to the public, so that there was a net public benefit (i.e. even after we account for the cost of providing that benefit to authors) then it should be done, not because it benefits authors, but because it benefits the public. Naturally, if there is no copyright that could yield a net public benefit, then we'd be best off without any. But I don't think that's presently true.
So, while it's a mouthful, I'd suggest that the copyright should be that which yields the greatest net public benefit. And at present, it is not doing so, and might even be yielding a net public detriment!
I believe you meant to say 'unfair copypatent dilution.'
It makes hosts not liable for user-caused copyright infringement as long as they respond to take-down notices. This is what makes sites like YouTube even legally possible.
Well, it clarifies it, at any rate. Prior to the 512 safe harbor, some ISPs had been held liable for what their users did, and some ISPs had not been. The unpredictability was bad enough that they lobbied hard for clear protection. You could have YouTube without the DMCA (and indeed, if a (b)-(d) type of ISP fails to register, they are not protected!) but it would be a lot riskier.
However they felt it was a necessary evil for society, so they reluctantly included provisions for copyright into the Constitution
This isn't entirely accurate. The framers didn't think that copyright was necessary, just that it was potentially useful. But the main reason that it's in the federal Constitution is because most of the states had already had copyright laws, and they were different, and it was a mess. It's the same reason that the commerce clause was written, along with a number of other federal powers; the states were just no good at it. Had they been able to do a good job for the few years they were at it, we probably wouldn't have federal copyright law at all.
Copyright also wasn't supposed to be a concentrated form of politico-economic power, either: it was supposed to protect the creators, so that they could continue to create, not enrich the weasels that figured out how to cheat our best and brightest out of their rights. Consequently, I don't necessarily equate "content creator" with "rightsholder".
... and that's too bad.
Actually, US copyrights, and English copyright law before that, always provided for the alienability of copyrights. Thus, the exclusive rights conferred were meant to initially vest in the author, but otherwise to be held by anyone who had legitimately acquired them. You're right that 'author' and 'copyright holder' are two different things (though a single person can be both). But there's no reason for good copyright policy to especially protect authors. I agree that a lot of authors get into bad contracts, but no one compelled them to agree. It is insultingly paternalistic to insist on protecting authors from themselves. If a specific contract is unconscionable, then fine, but generally the only people who get to void almost any contract at will are children, and I don't like treating authors as though they were children.
Most of the complaining about modern copyright you hear on Slashdot revolves around the fact that it isn't a middle ground anymore, is no longer a reasonable compromise. It's now a rightsholder's paradise
Why should it be a middle ground? Copyright should be crafted to maximize the public interest. I don't mind the public giving things to authors, but it should only be done where the public winds up receiving a greater benefit than it cost them. Respecting authors as equal parties in copyright is what got us into this mess!
Because World Trade Organization membership is a package deal
And the US is a significant force in the WTO, and this wouldn't involve mandating changes for anyone else; just us. All that would be required would be to change the deal. It's doable.
Such limitations on copyright, if applied to works from all countries, would violate international copyright treaties.
Did you have a point to make there? The treaties are, it turns out, a bad idea. The US should leave them as soon as possible. This is not an uncommon opinion, either; whenever you hear someone suggest that copyright terms should be shorter than life+50 (e.g. the original 14+14 term, or some other amount) then those people are necessarily supporting exiting Berne and its ilk as well. A better policy for the US would be unilateral national treatment. Personally, I would like to see other countries do likewise, but just as US copyright policy should be up to the US, and not the rest of the world, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to tell other countries what to do.
There's also a copyright issue involved; even the developer will cease publishing and supporting the game over time, and it's likely that it will stop being compatible with modern hardware and software due to underlying changes in APIs and such.
Part of the solution to this from a legal angle (in the US at least) would be: to mandate registration for all works for which a US copyright is sought; to mandate the deposit of a full, unprotected/unencrypted copy of the software and source, plus additional comments and information, so as to enable a programmer of ordinary skill (cf. PHOSITA in the patent field) to understand and make use of it freely; and to have a very short maximum copyright term -- perhaps five years -- in recognition of the especially short commercial lifetime of software.
As much as it would be great for the original parties -- the creators of the game, the OS, the hardware, etc. -- to provide long-term support, ultimately, it's safer to not put all of our eggs in that basket. Instead we should make sure that the resources are available so that even if they're not interested, but some third party is, that the software can be kept running in one way or another.