how is it that you think multi-year projects involving top-flight technical and creative talent are going to be made?
Perhaps they will be financed by some other means, as happened before copyright existed, and as still happens in various artistic fields. Perhaps they won't be made.
So what?
No one is making trillion dollar movies at the current moment. Perhaps we could change the laws to make this more profitable, e.g. whenever anyone so much as thinks of the movie, they have to pay $10. Would it be worthwhile? I doubt it. The harshness of the laws required to get a trillion dollar movie made, and the burden the laws would impose, would totally outweigh the benefit of having the movie, even if it was the best movie ever. We are better off without that movie, because it costs too much.
It is entirely possible that the same is true of the hundred million dollar movies we've got these days.
Reducing the copyright laws to an appropriate level, even if it resulted in fewer movies being made, and those movies having lower budgets, still would probably leave the public better off than we are now. That makes it worth it.
I think the penalty should be whatever it takes to make piracy unthinkable.
That's impossible.
I do agree though, that one function of punishment for lawlessness is to discourage lawlessness. However, it is critical that the law be appropriate; laws should not be unduly harsh. Thus, while we might want to have serious punishments for copyright infringement, we might also want to significantly reduce what constitutes copyright infringement in the first place. I for one think that it should be legal for natural persons acting noncommercially to do anything they want in conjunction with creative works. Provided that there were appropriately stern (not too much, and not too little) penalties for conduct that would, in that case, be infringing, would you find that acceptable?
I suspect not. But then, you did give us this gem:
I write software for a living, and I sure as hell do not want people obtaining my hard work for free.
Copyright policy not only strives to ensure, with no less than a guarantee written into the Constitution, that people can ultimately obtain the fruits of your labor for free, it also doesn't much care for your absolutist position. Or the idea that 'hard work' has anything to do with anything.
If you write software under the current laws, then you have made the strongest possible case for not giving you the laws you want. This is because copyright is an incentive to get authors to create and publish works that they otherwise would not have created and published. You already create and publish. You don't need more of an incentive. Giving you more would be akin to finding someone willing to paint your house for $10/h and then paying them $100/h. It's stupid and wasteful. It's great if you're on the receiving end of that, sure, but it's totally unacceptable if you're the one that is out of pocket.
You're greedy, and I can respect that, since it is your greed that permits the public to exploit you via the copyright system. But don't go thinking that the public cannot justifiably be equally as greedy -- wanting the most works created and published for the least copyright granted to the authors. And don't think that there is any reason why we should try to satiate your greed when it does not profit us to do so. You're not that special.
My problem with piracy and anti-copyright, is that these people think they have a right to the material without paying, which is equally incorrect. The artist/creator didn't have to release his/her work to the world.
It's true that the artist doesn't have to release his work publicly, but works which are never revealed might as well not exist. They are irrelevant to copyright policy. That an author chooses to release his work doesn't mean that the author should necessarily have the right to prevent other people to whom he has released the work from themselves making and distributing copies of the work, etc.
To put it another way, the artist can control access to his copy of the work, and can even control whether that copy exists or not, but anything beyond that requires the consent of everyone else.
Meh. I'd say that patent law is what's concerned with innovation. Copyright law is instead interested in originality, which is not the same thing.
Besides, while you might disagree with the earlier poster as to how well his proposal serves the public good as compared to yours, he has a valid enough position.
Not quite. Good for you for citing the correct statute, but you seem to have misread it.
There is no maximum for actual damages and profits. However, when a plaintiff opts for statutory damages instead, the damages per work are an amount between $750 and $30,000 as is just. If the infringement was 'innocent' (a bad term of art here meaning that the infringer did not know and had no reason to know that he infringed, but did in fact infringe anyway, and is still culpable), then the range becomes $200 to $30,000. OTOH, if the infringer acted willfully, the range becomes $750 to $150,000. Statutory damages don't go higher than $150,000 per work.
Criminal fines may go as high as $250,000 per count. A court can also, or alternatively, imprison a criminal infringer.
No, the terms of the license are whatever they happen to be. If the patent license that goes with a copy of Windows says that it only lets you do otherwise-infringing acts if they're done with that software, and not with some other software, then that's what you're stuck with.
A license can be broad, or narrow, or conditional -- however the drafter decides to write it if the parties agree to it.
You're saying something like: If Alice owns a dozen cars, and lends the keys to one specific car to Bob, Bob ought to be allowed to hotwire and take any or all of the cars. That is, you're saying that narrow permission should equate to broad permission. But this isn't necessarily so. Just as Alice can opt to only let Bob borrow the clunker and to not let him borrow the exotic, so too can MS decide to license people for conduct when they use MS software, but not for conduct in conjunction with non-MS software.
In the US anyway, contract law lets the parties do almost anything they want. You'd have to go pretty far to have a court go against a particular term.
Exactly MS probably violates several hundred IBM patents.... Remember They're were writing OS's before Bill Gates parents were born.
William Gates II was born in 1925. Mary Gates was born in 1929. OSes didn't really come about, AFAIK, until sometime in the 50's. Before that, a computer would only run one program at a time, and it had to do everything needed whilst it was running; having complete access to all the system resources probably helped some.
No, the previous post wasn't being serious about that, and yes, I'm being pedantic. What of it?
I'm not arguing with the Constitution, I'm agreeing with it. The Constitution gives Congress the power to enact copyright laws, though it does not obligate Congress to do so. Whether Congress actually uses its copyright power, and to what degree it uses it, is up to Congress. Except that the Constitution does require that if Congress enacts copyright laws that the laws must: 1) promote the progress of science; 2) only grant copyrights for the writings of authors; 3) vest those copyrights in the authors, and; 4) only permit the copyrights to subsist for a limited time.
The framers would not have required that Congress only enact copyright laws that promote the progress of science if it were impossible to do otherwise. Thus we can safely infer that it is possible, and that they knew it was possible, to have copyright laws which do not promote the progress of science, and perhaps to even have copyright laws which retard the progress of science.
This means that it is important to determine whether a given copyright law actually promotes the progress of science or not, and if so, how much. It is important to compare different possible laws, and the degree to which they promote the progress of science, so that we can enact the one that promotes it the most.
This requires that we consider just what constitutes the promotion of progress of science. Is it merely a matter of forever increasing the term and scope of copyright? Or is it more subtle? In fact it is more subtle. We can surely agree that an ideal world, from the viewpoint of our policy goals here, would be one in which the most number of original works were created and published, in which the most number of derivative works were created and published, and in which everyone could freely make complete use of all works, however they saw fit, sharing and learning from them as much as possible, without any artificial constraints such as wealth or the favor of the authors. That is to say, the ideal world would have maximum creation of original works, of derivative works, and would not have any copyrights.
We may not be able to have that, but we should craft our copyright laws so that they approach it as closely as possible. Since, as has already been established, there are numerous natural incentives for authors, and copyright is only a single, economic incentive, we should first consider how much creation and publication would go on without copyright. This is the natural state of things, after all, and so it can act as our baseline. If a law produces a greater net benefit than is realized without copyright, then it's an improvement. If not, then it's worse than having no law at all. Likewise, we weigh the various proposed laws against one another.
What we're looking for is the copyright law that yields the greatest public benefit (i.e. gets closest to the ideal in each of the three areas listed above), for the least public detriment (i.e. gets further from the ideals above). The longer and greater in scope the copyright laws are, the further we move from the third ideal, of having no law at all. Thus, whatever benefit more law produces, if any, must be reduced by the detriment that the very same law causes. So long as the benefit is greater than the detriment, we're above the baseline. And somewhere in there, will be one configuration of laws that produces the greatest benefit for the least detriment, yielding the greatest net benefit. That's the law we want, if it exists.
I think that it does exist. I don't think that there are no copyright laws that are better than the baseline of no law at all. But I think that the current law is far from ideal, and is close to being worse than the baseline. I am not interested in abolishing copyright law unless I become convinced that there is no acceptable law. Rather, I am interested in reforming copyright law so that it produces the greatest net public benefit.
As for the crap you're writing about murder laws, I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say. My beef with copyright is
Some people create works for money which is obtained from exploiting a copyright.
Some people create works for money which is not obtained from exploiting a copyright.
Some people create works for the purpose of fame or reputation, without concern for monetary gain.
Some people create works as a hobby, for relaxation, or to occupy their time.
Some people create works as practice, because they are honing their skills.
Some people create works because they are required to do so by some authority.
Some people create works simply for art's sake.
There are probably some more reasons besides these.
These are all incentives for creating works, and there is nothing that requires that they be mutually exclusive of one another; many if not most authors are incentivized by several of these at once.
Besides, copyright doesn't incentivise, the possibility of some form of profit or advantage is what incentivises.
Copyright is a mechanism for monopolizing much of the money that can be made from a work. The likelihood of a work having economic worth varies, and is not guaranteed by copyright, but copyright does cause that worth to largely be in the hands of the rightsholder, rather than dispersed. So I'd say it's a pretty significant incentive at times.
We need those laws, even if they can't be perfectly enforced, they have their beneficial effect.
You assume too much. If the laws are beneficial to the public, then we do want those laws, up to the point where they provide the greatest benefit for the least detriment. It isn't good enough to merely say that there is some gross benefit. You need to look at the bigger picture. Further, we shouldn't be too attached to any specific law. Whatever will provide the greatest net benefit is what we want. The current laws might not be the best laws.
This also leaves open the possibility that no law could provide a greater benefit than the detriment that accompanies it. In that case, though I think it is unlikely that we'd be in that case, the best option is to abolish the law altogether. Still, I don't think we're at that point; reform seems to be the best option, unless you think that the present laws are the best possible laws, and AFAICT no one thinks that.
This is lumped in with trivialities like granting the government the power to coin money and maintain an army. Why?
Because prior to the establishment of the federal government, the states retained more powers to themselves, while the United States government was considerably less powerful. While it had seemed like a good idea to avoid centralization of power originally, it rapidly became clear that it just wasn't very practical. The states made a hash of copyright laws, so the power to have a uniform copyright law for the entire country was felt to be useful. That's really the only reason that it's in the Constitution.
If we go too far down this road it will remove the incentive for innovation
Well, it would remove an incentive, but that incentive is artificial, and far from the only incentive. Since it is costly to maintain a copyright system, and since the incentivizing effect of copyright doesn't scale evenly (i.e. each additional unit of copyright generally is less of an incentive than the previous units), it may very well be that we can have plenty of incentive for far less of a cost by reducing, or even -- given the right circumstances -- abolishing, copyright. Incidentally, copyright isn't interested in innovation.
I'd disagree as to the copyrightability of the photo. Yes, photographs are generally copyrightable, but they're still subject to the same requirement of originality as anything else. Generally, what makes a photo a creative work (creativity being an element of originality) is the creative choice of subject, composition, pose, lighting, etc. But here, those choices are not undertaken creatively, they're dictated by outside considerations -- the subject has to be the user of the ID (or someone who looks like them, at least), and the rest is meant to copy the appearance of legitimate IDs, and is drawn from that, rather than being original to the photographer. There's nothing creative there.
Also, re: the photo, the identity of the copyright holder is relevant. It might not be the person using the ID and making the claim.
First, derivative works are not necessarily uncopyrightable. This one likely is, but not merely because it is a derivative work; it's because it lacks originality.
Second, few IDs are US government works. Only federally-issued IDs, such as passports, would qualify for that. Most ordinary IDs are issued by the states, and the states are perfectly free to create copyrightable works. Section 105 does not apply to them. And as before, just because a work is derivative of a US government work, that alone doesn't make it uncopyrightable.
No, copyright doesn't care about such things. So long as a work is an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium, it is copyrightable. There are some exceptions, but none hinge on whether the work is illegal to use or possess for some other reason.
The reason why this fake ID is likely uncopyrightable is because it lacks originality, being copied from a preexisting work (i.e. a legitimate ID). There might be slight differences, but they wouldn't be likely to support copyrightability.
US Citizens who assume copyright isn't an inherent right, when it's right their in the United States Constitution.
No, you need to read it more closely. Copyright isn't an inherent right. The Constitution merely empowers Congress to make copyright laws, or not, as they wish. They aren't required to, and outside of a few broad limits, the laws can take whatever shape Congress sees fit. The rights are still clearly artificial in nature however. If the clause wasn't in the Constitution, then copyright would be handled entirely by the states, which was how it used to be done. With the clause, it has been handled by both the states and the US government, though of late the federal laws have generally preempted the state laws under the supremacy clause so that it all runs a little more consistently.
As for when the problems started, I strongly disagree with you. The first problems were in the mid-19th century, with the derivative right. The late 19th century and early 20th were bad -- the publishing industries had way too much input in crafting the 1909 Act. The 1976 Act was far, far worse. You're concentrating on the straw that broke the camel's back, but that doesn't make the prior bunch of straws all that good either.
Well, they can only prevent you from copying the modifications. The unmodified portions of your work that appear in their work retain their original status. This is because the only portions of a derivative work that are copyrightable as that work are the new portions. The preexisting portions continue to fall under the work from which those portions originate.
Current law does nothing to secure rights to authors and inventors.
Whether or not this is true hinges entirely on what the Constitution means by 'secure.' When I brought up the issue of meaning, you replied with the following bit of nonsense:
The only history which is important with respect to the Constitution is that which led to the Declaration of Independence.
Which is utterly hilarious because you are clearly saying that there is no history relevant to the Constitution from the time period of 1776-1787, the former date being when the Declaration was written, and the latter date being when the Constitution was written. You're claiming that events in that time period, such as the failed government under the Articles of Confederation, didn't have any bearing on the Constitution, even though the Constitution was expressly intended to fix the problems of the previous United States government (hence the bit in the preamble about forming a more perfect union; the existing one wasn't too good).
What this boils down to is that you're an idiot. You don't know anything about the law, you don't know anything about history, you are unwilling to look into them, and you're a waste of my time. I'm happy to have long discussions with people who disagree with me, as I am optimistic that I can change their minds or that they can change mine, or at least we can understand one another better. But this requires honesty and an open mind. You have neither, and it's dubious whether you've got a mind in the first place, which is a prerequisite to having an open one.
Feel free to better yourself and maybe you can manage to live up to the low standards required to have a discussion that isn't utterly, utterly worthless. I doubt it'll happen though.
That is not securing their rights to them. That is facilitating the transfer of rights from them. That is not what was meant, no matter how much you would wish for it to be so.
Well, there's a huge amount of history supporting the initial vesting interpretation, which does indeed grant rights to authors and inventors, since they are not obligated to assign those rights to others against their will (though they're free to do so voluntarily, or to voluntarily enter into a binding contract to that effect). Since you appear to be the sole person claiming otherwise, in defiance of centuries of legal tradition, why don't you put up or shut up? Find some support for your position that is contemporaneous with the Constitution. Since there isn't any, hopefully this'll be the last we hear from you.
You're either stupid beyond the level of anything I've ever seen or you're deliberately creating argument because you're an asshat.
Well, it's nice to see such dispassionate, logical, and well-reasoned argument spewing forth. Sounds like Flat Earthers or John Birchers to me.
The important question being: how many of them are still secured to the author or inventor?
How many copyrights? The vast, vast, vast majority. This is because for most works, no one is interested in buying the rights or licensing them or anything.
Sure, but the compiled binaries aren't very useful in promoting the progress of science, are they? Requiring that, as a condition for a copyright on the binaries, a copy of the source and other supplementary information as required by the Copyright Office (e.g. information as to the platform, compiler, etc.) be deposited in the Library of Congress, would be sensible. People who wanted to learn from the software could read through the source, but they still wouldn't be allowed to make copies of it. Copyright doesn't protect ideas or techniques, only specific expressions, so it cannot be argued as a reason against this that competitors could make work-alike software; our copyright policy always has wanted them to be able to do that. It's easier for people to analyze a novel than it is for software. But by requiring this supplementary deposit, we can bring the software situation up to the same level that is traditional for other works.
The Constitution says to secure rights to authors and inventors.
But what is meant by that is to initially vest those rights to them, and from then to let the authors and inventors make their own choices. Not to act contrary to their wishes by giving them property that they cannot dispose of as they wish, when they wish, if they wish. Indeed, the framers were against that idea, and thus the US abolished things like the fee tail as a result.
The people who wrote the Constitution didn't think so.
They apparently did, given that 1) state laws which were on the mind of the framers followed the English model, 2) contemporaneous writings indicate that they had basically the English model in mind, 3) the first Congress, which had the closest connection to the framers of any implemented a law along the English model, and 4) none of the framers seem to have indicated their objection later on.
O RLY? Have the profiteers ever offered the option? Show one example where an author or inventor has been offered an option between selling rights and licensing them and chosen to sell them.
It isn't up to them anyway. Copyright holders can undertake any kind of deal. There's no guarantee that anyone will agree to arbitrary terms of course; it takes two to tango. But assuming that there was some licensee who was willing to do it, and that he could come to agreement with some licensor who wanted to do it, it's entirely possible. As it happens, yes, this does occur, all the time. In fact I'd say that copyright licenses are far more common than assignments, and any competently-written license will include benchmarks and other mechanisms to provide some control to the licensor.
Nobody is doing their Constitutional duty to secure their rights, either.
Giving those rights to them is all that is required. The future disposition of the rights is up to the rightsholders themselves, rather than some paternalistic government that knows better than them.
this exact same problem was in the very government they fought a Revolutionary War to separate themselves from.
In which case, why is it that the states, after becoming independent, passed copyright laws which all permit transferring copyrights, just like the Statute of Anne did. And why did the first Congress, in 1790, pass a copyright law which also permits it?
Plus, of course, England had the best (and only) copyright laws in the world at the time; why would an author want to rebel for that reason?
Maybe copyright law could allow original authors and inventors to license their ideas to employers or developers but they should still maintain final control.
They are allowed to do that if they want to. But they're allowed to sell them or give them away if they want to as well. It's just like anything else: if I own a house, I am allowed to keep it, rent it, sell it, or tear it down. I can make deals that are good for me or which are foolish. It's not your place -- ever -- to tell me what I can do with my own property. Likewise, if an author is willing to sell his rights for what seems to you to be a foolish price, it is utterly inappropriate for you to second-guess them. So long as they had the choice to make the deal or not, that's all anyone should care about.
Slashdot Mirror
how is it that you think multi-year projects involving top-flight technical and creative talent are going to be made?
Perhaps they will be financed by some other means, as happened before copyright existed, and as still happens in various artistic fields. Perhaps they won't be made.
So what?
No one is making trillion dollar movies at the current moment. Perhaps we could change the laws to make this more profitable, e.g. whenever anyone so much as thinks of the movie, they have to pay $10. Would it be worthwhile? I doubt it. The harshness of the laws required to get a trillion dollar movie made, and the burden the laws would impose, would totally outweigh the benefit of having the movie, even if it was the best movie ever. We are better off without that movie, because it costs too much.
It is entirely possible that the same is true of the hundred million dollar movies we've got these days.
Reducing the copyright laws to an appropriate level, even if it resulted in fewer movies being made, and those movies having lower budgets, still would probably leave the public better off than we are now. That makes it worth it.
I think the penalty should be whatever it takes to make piracy unthinkable.
That's impossible.
I do agree though, that one function of punishment for lawlessness is to discourage lawlessness. However, it is critical that the law be appropriate; laws should not be unduly harsh. Thus, while we might want to have serious punishments for copyright infringement, we might also want to significantly reduce what constitutes copyright infringement in the first place. I for one think that it should be legal for natural persons acting noncommercially to do anything they want in conjunction with creative works. Provided that there were appropriately stern (not too much, and not too little) penalties for conduct that would, in that case, be infringing, would you find that acceptable?
I suspect not. But then, you did give us this gem:
I write software for a living, and I sure as hell do not want people obtaining my hard work for free.
Copyright policy not only strives to ensure, with no less than a guarantee written into the Constitution, that people can ultimately obtain the fruits of your labor for free, it also doesn't much care for your absolutist position. Or the idea that 'hard work' has anything to do with anything.
If you write software under the current laws, then you have made the strongest possible case for not giving you the laws you want. This is because copyright is an incentive to get authors to create and publish works that they otherwise would not have created and published. You already create and publish. You don't need more of an incentive. Giving you more would be akin to finding someone willing to paint your house for $10/h and then paying them $100/h. It's stupid and wasteful. It's great if you're on the receiving end of that, sure, but it's totally unacceptable if you're the one that is out of pocket.
You're greedy, and I can respect that, since it is your greed that permits the public to exploit you via the copyright system. But don't go thinking that the public cannot justifiably be equally as greedy -- wanting the most works created and published for the least copyright granted to the authors. And don't think that there is any reason why we should try to satiate your greed when it does not profit us to do so. You're not that special.
My problem with piracy and anti-copyright, is that these people think they have a right to the material without paying, which is equally incorrect. The artist/creator didn't have to release his/her work to the world.
It's true that the artist doesn't have to release his work publicly, but works which are never revealed might as well not exist. They are irrelevant to copyright policy. That an author chooses to release his work doesn't mean that the author should necessarily have the right to prevent other people to whom he has released the work from themselves making and distributing copies of the work, etc.
To put it another way, the artist can control access to his copy of the work, and can even control whether that copy exists or not, but anything beyond that requires the consent of everyone else.
No, you're not totally wrong. But remember that it is entirely possible to violate sections 1201 and 1202 without actually infringing on a copyright.
It must be a lot of fun to toss that through the gate at the embassy. Clear! Opaque! Clear! Opaque! Clear! Opaque!
Must've been invented by the same people that did the thermos.
Meh. I'd say that patent law is what's concerned with innovation. Copyright law is instead interested in originality, which is not the same thing.
Besides, while you might disagree with the earlier poster as to how well his proposal serves the public good as compared to yours, he has a valid enough position.
Not quite. Good for you for citing the correct statute, but you seem to have misread it.
There is no maximum for actual damages and profits. However, when a plaintiff opts for statutory damages instead, the damages per work are an amount between $750 and $30,000 as is just. If the infringement was 'innocent' (a bad term of art here meaning that the infringer did not know and had no reason to know that he infringed, but did in fact infringe anyway, and is still culpable), then the range becomes $200 to $30,000. OTOH, if the infringer acted willfully, the range becomes $750 to $150,000. Statutory damages don't go higher than $150,000 per work.
Criminal fines may go as high as $250,000 per count. A court can also, or alternatively, imprison a criminal infringer.
Are you saying that Sonny Bono is still a scientologist? Because that's a hell of an achievement, then.
No, the terms of the license are whatever they happen to be. If the patent license that goes with a copy of Windows says that it only lets you do otherwise-infringing acts if they're done with that software, and not with some other software, then that's what you're stuck with.
A license can be broad, or narrow, or conditional -- however the drafter decides to write it if the parties agree to it.
You're saying something like: If Alice owns a dozen cars, and lends the keys to one specific car to Bob, Bob ought to be allowed to hotwire and take any or all of the cars. That is, you're saying that narrow permission should equate to broad permission. But this isn't necessarily so. Just as Alice can opt to only let Bob borrow the clunker and to not let him borrow the exotic, so too can MS decide to license people for conduct when they use MS software, but not for conduct in conjunction with non-MS software.
In the US anyway, contract law lets the parties do almost anything they want. You'd have to go pretty far to have a court go against a particular term.
Exactly MS probably violates several hundred IBM patents.... Remember They're were writing OS's before Bill Gates parents were born.
William Gates II was born in 1925. Mary Gates was born in 1929. OSes didn't really come about, AFAIK, until sometime in the 50's. Before that, a computer would only run one program at a time, and it had to do everything needed whilst it was running; having complete access to all the system resources probably helped some.
No, the previous post wasn't being serious about that, and yes, I'm being pedantic. What of it?
I'm not arguing with the Constitution, I'm agreeing with it. The Constitution gives Congress the power to enact copyright laws, though it does not obligate Congress to do so. Whether Congress actually uses its copyright power, and to what degree it uses it, is up to Congress. Except that the Constitution does require that if Congress enacts copyright laws that the laws must: 1) promote the progress of science; 2) only grant copyrights for the writings of authors; 3) vest those copyrights in the authors, and; 4) only permit the copyrights to subsist for a limited time.
The framers would not have required that Congress only enact copyright laws that promote the progress of science if it were impossible to do otherwise. Thus we can safely infer that it is possible, and that they knew it was possible, to have copyright laws which do not promote the progress of science, and perhaps to even have copyright laws which retard the progress of science.
This means that it is important to determine whether a given copyright law actually promotes the progress of science or not, and if so, how much. It is important to compare different possible laws, and the degree to which they promote the progress of science, so that we can enact the one that promotes it the most.
This requires that we consider just what constitutes the promotion of progress of science. Is it merely a matter of forever increasing the term and scope of copyright? Or is it more subtle? In fact it is more subtle. We can surely agree that an ideal world, from the viewpoint of our policy goals here, would be one in which the most number of original works were created and published, in which the most number of derivative works were created and published, and in which everyone could freely make complete use of all works, however they saw fit, sharing and learning from them as much as possible, without any artificial constraints such as wealth or the favor of the authors. That is to say, the ideal world would have maximum creation of original works, of derivative works, and would not have any copyrights.
We may not be able to have that, but we should craft our copyright laws so that they approach it as closely as possible. Since, as has already been established, there are numerous natural incentives for authors, and copyright is only a single, economic incentive, we should first consider how much creation and publication would go on without copyright. This is the natural state of things, after all, and so it can act as our baseline. If a law produces a greater net benefit than is realized without copyright, then it's an improvement. If not, then it's worse than having no law at all. Likewise, we weigh the various proposed laws against one another.
What we're looking for is the copyright law that yields the greatest public benefit (i.e. gets closest to the ideal in each of the three areas listed above), for the least public detriment (i.e. gets further from the ideals above). The longer and greater in scope the copyright laws are, the further we move from the third ideal, of having no law at all. Thus, whatever benefit more law produces, if any, must be reduced by the detriment that the very same law causes. So long as the benefit is greater than the detriment, we're above the baseline. And somewhere in there, will be one configuration of laws that produces the greatest benefit for the least detriment, yielding the greatest net benefit. That's the law we want, if it exists.
I think that it does exist. I don't think that there are no copyright laws that are better than the baseline of no law at all. But I think that the current law is far from ideal, and is close to being worse than the baseline. I am not interested in abolishing copyright law unless I become convinced that there is no acceptable law. Rather, I am interested in reforming copyright law so that it produces the greatest net public benefit.
As for the crap you're writing about murder laws, I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say. My beef with copyright is
What exactly IS that incentive
Some people create works for money which is obtained from exploiting a copyright.
Some people create works for money which is not obtained from exploiting a copyright.
Some people create works for the purpose of fame or reputation, without concern for monetary gain.
Some people create works as a hobby, for relaxation, or to occupy their time.
Some people create works as practice, because they are honing their skills.
Some people create works because they are required to do so by some authority.
Some people create works simply for art's sake.
There are probably some more reasons besides these.
These are all incentives for creating works, and there is nothing that requires that they be mutually exclusive of one another; many if not most authors are incentivized by several of these at once.
Besides, copyright doesn't incentivise, the possibility of some form of profit or advantage is what incentivises.
Copyright is a mechanism for monopolizing much of the money that can be made from a work. The likelihood of a work having economic worth varies, and is not guaranteed by copyright, but copyright does cause that worth to largely be in the hands of the rightsholder, rather than dispersed. So I'd say it's a pretty significant incentive at times.
We need those laws, even if they can't be perfectly enforced, they have their beneficial effect.
You assume too much. If the laws are beneficial to the public, then we do want those laws, up to the point where they provide the greatest benefit for the least detriment. It isn't good enough to merely say that there is some gross benefit. You need to look at the bigger picture. Further, we shouldn't be too attached to any specific law. Whatever will provide the greatest net benefit is what we want. The current laws might not be the best laws.
This also leaves open the possibility that no law could provide a greater benefit than the detriment that accompanies it. In that case, though I think it is unlikely that we'd be in that case, the best option is to abolish the law altogether. Still, I don't think we're at that point; reform seems to be the best option, unless you think that the present laws are the best possible laws, and AFAICT no one thinks that.
This is lumped in with trivialities like granting the government the power to coin money and maintain an army. Why?
Because prior to the establishment of the federal government, the states retained more powers to themselves, while the United States government was considerably less powerful. While it had seemed like a good idea to avoid centralization of power originally, it rapidly became clear that it just wasn't very practical. The states made a hash of copyright laws, so the power to have a uniform copyright law for the entire country was felt to be useful. That's really the only reason that it's in the Constitution.
If we go too far down this road it will remove the incentive for innovation
Well, it would remove an incentive, but that incentive is artificial, and far from the only incentive. Since it is costly to maintain a copyright system, and since the incentivizing effect of copyright doesn't scale evenly (i.e. each additional unit of copyright generally is less of an incentive than the previous units), it may very well be that we can have plenty of incentive for far less of a cost by reducing, or even -- given the right circumstances -- abolishing, copyright. Incidentally, copyright isn't interested in innovation.
I'd disagree as to the copyrightability of the photo. Yes, photographs are generally copyrightable, but they're still subject to the same requirement of originality as anything else. Generally, what makes a photo a creative work (creativity being an element of originality) is the creative choice of subject, composition, pose, lighting, etc. But here, those choices are not undertaken creatively, they're dictated by outside considerations -- the subject has to be the user of the ID (or someone who looks like them, at least), and the rest is meant to copy the appearance of legitimate IDs, and is drawn from that, rather than being original to the photographer. There's nothing creative there.
Also, re: the photo, the identity of the copyright holder is relevant. It might not be the person using the ID and making the claim.
Wrong, I'm afraid.
First, derivative works are not necessarily uncopyrightable. This one likely is, but not merely because it is a derivative work; it's because it lacks originality.
Second, few IDs are US government works. Only federally-issued IDs, such as passports, would qualify for that. Most ordinary IDs are issued by the states, and the states are perfectly free to create copyrightable works. Section 105 does not apply to them. And as before, just because a work is derivative of a US government work, that alone doesn't make it uncopyrightable.
No, copyright doesn't care about such things. So long as a work is an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium, it is copyrightable. There are some exceptions, but none hinge on whether the work is illegal to use or possess for some other reason.
The reason why this fake ID is likely uncopyrightable is because it lacks originality, being copied from a preexisting work (i.e. a legitimate ID). There might be slight differences, but they wouldn't be likely to support copyrightability.
US Citizens who assume copyright isn't an inherent right, when it's right their in the United States Constitution.
No, you need to read it more closely. Copyright isn't an inherent right. The Constitution merely empowers Congress to make copyright laws, or not, as they wish. They aren't required to, and outside of a few broad limits, the laws can take whatever shape Congress sees fit. The rights are still clearly artificial in nature however. If the clause wasn't in the Constitution, then copyright would be handled entirely by the states, which was how it used to be done. With the clause, it has been handled by both the states and the US government, though of late the federal laws have generally preempted the state laws under the supremacy clause so that it all runs a little more consistently.
As for when the problems started, I strongly disagree with you. The first problems were in the mid-19th century, with the derivative right. The late 19th century and early 20th were bad -- the publishing industries had way too much input in crafting the 1909 Act. The 1976 Act was far, far worse. You're concentrating on the straw that broke the camel's back, but that doesn't make the prior bunch of straws all that good either.
Well, they can only prevent you from copying the modifications. The unmodified portions of your work that appear in their work retain their original status. This is because the only portions of a derivative work that are copyrightable as that work are the new portions. The preexisting portions continue to fall under the work from which those portions originate.
Of course, you can also be in favor of copyright (so long as it's reformed properly) but still put everything into the public domain.
Obviously the author should retain the credit for his works
Why? Don't just assume that it must be so; that's a lot of what's gotten us into this situation. Justify it and consider reasons against it.
Current law does nothing to secure rights to authors and inventors.
Whether or not this is true hinges entirely on what the Constitution means by 'secure.' When I brought up the issue of meaning, you replied with the following bit of nonsense:
The only history which is important with respect to the Constitution is that which led to the Declaration of Independence.
Which is utterly hilarious because you are clearly saying that there is no history relevant to the Constitution from the time period of 1776-1787, the former date being when the Declaration was written, and the latter date being when the Constitution was written. You're claiming that events in that time period, such as the failed government under the Articles of Confederation, didn't have any bearing on the Constitution, even though the Constitution was expressly intended to fix the problems of the previous United States government (hence the bit in the preamble about forming a more perfect union; the existing one wasn't too good).
What this boils down to is that you're an idiot. You don't know anything about the law, you don't know anything about history, you are unwilling to look into them, and you're a waste of my time. I'm happy to have long discussions with people who disagree with me, as I am optimistic that I can change their minds or that they can change mine, or at least we can understand one another better. But this requires honesty and an open mind. You have neither, and it's dubious whether you've got a mind in the first place, which is a prerequisite to having an open one.
Feel free to better yourself and maybe you can manage to live up to the low standards required to have a discussion that isn't utterly, utterly worthless. I doubt it'll happen though.
That is not securing their rights to them. That is facilitating the transfer of rights from them. That is not what was meant, no matter how much you would wish for it to be so.
Well, there's a huge amount of history supporting the initial vesting interpretation, which does indeed grant rights to authors and inventors, since they are not obligated to assign those rights to others against their will (though they're free to do so voluntarily, or to voluntarily enter into a binding contract to that effect). Since you appear to be the sole person claiming otherwise, in defiance of centuries of legal tradition, why don't you put up or shut up? Find some support for your position that is contemporaneous with the Constitution. Since there isn't any, hopefully this'll be the last we hear from you.
You're either stupid beyond the level of anything I've ever seen or you're deliberately creating argument because you're an asshat.
Well, it's nice to see such dispassionate, logical, and well-reasoned argument spewing forth. Sounds like Flat Earthers or John Birchers to me.
The important question being: how many of them are still secured to the author or inventor?
How many copyrights? The vast, vast, vast majority. This is because for most works, no one is interested in buying the rights or licensing them or anything.
Sure, but the compiled binaries aren't very useful in promoting the progress of science, are they? Requiring that, as a condition for a copyright on the binaries, a copy of the source and other supplementary information as required by the Copyright Office (e.g. information as to the platform, compiler, etc.) be deposited in the Library of Congress, would be sensible. People who wanted to learn from the software could read through the source, but they still wouldn't be allowed to make copies of it. Copyright doesn't protect ideas or techniques, only specific expressions, so it cannot be argued as a reason against this that competitors could make work-alike software; our copyright policy always has wanted them to be able to do that. It's easier for people to analyze a novel than it is for software. But by requiring this supplementary deposit, we can bring the software situation up to the same level that is traditional for other works.
The Constitution says to secure rights to authors and inventors.
But what is meant by that is to initially vest those rights to them, and from then to let the authors and inventors make their own choices. Not to act contrary to their wishes by giving them property that they cannot dispose of as they wish, when they wish, if they wish. Indeed, the framers were against that idea, and thus the US abolished things like the fee tail as a result.
The people who wrote the Constitution didn't think so.
They apparently did, given that 1) state laws which were on the mind of the framers followed the English model, 2) contemporaneous writings indicate that they had basically the English model in mind, 3) the first Congress, which had the closest connection to the framers of any implemented a law along the English model, and 4) none of the framers seem to have indicated their objection later on.
O RLY? Have the profiteers ever offered the option? Show one example where an author or inventor has been offered an option between selling rights and licensing them and chosen to sell them.
It isn't up to them anyway. Copyright holders can undertake any kind of deal. There's no guarantee that anyone will agree to arbitrary terms of course; it takes two to tango. But assuming that there was some licensee who was willing to do it, and that he could come to agreement with some licensor who wanted to do it, it's entirely possible. As it happens, yes, this does occur, all the time. In fact I'd say that copyright licenses are far more common than assignments, and any competently-written license will include benchmarks and other mechanisms to provide some control to the licensor.
Nobody is doing their Constitutional duty to secure their rights, either.
Giving those rights to them is all that is required. The future disposition of the rights is up to the rightsholders themselves, rather than some paternalistic government that knows better than them.
this exact same problem was in the very government they fought a Revolutionary War to separate themselves from.
In which case, why is it that the states, after becoming independent, passed copyright laws which all permit transferring copyrights, just like the Statute of Anne did. And why did the first Congress, in 1790, pass a copyright law which also permits it?
Plus, of course, England had the best (and only) copyright laws in the world at the time; why would an author want to rebel for that reason?
Maybe copyright law could allow original authors and inventors to license their ideas to employers or developers but they should still maintain final control.
They are allowed to do that if they want to. But they're allowed to sell them or give them away if they want to as well. It's just like anything else: if I own a house, I am allowed to keep it, rent it, sell it, or tear it down. I can make deals that are good for me or which are foolish. It's not your place -- ever -- to tell me what I can do with my own property. Likewise, if an author is willing to sell his rights for what seems to you to be a foolish price, it is utterly inappropriate for you to second-guess them. So long as they had the choice to make the deal or not, that's all anyone should care about.