"That doesn't actually mean anything. The copyright notice can be in the name of the author and the author can still have handed their rights over to the company. It's a contractional obligation."
I know, but as I have always understood it, an author might sell the north american first publishing rights to one entity and the european first publishing rights to another entity, etc.
If your major contention aligns with the thought that trans-national mega corporate capitalism is wonked and needs at the least some tweaking, then I don't wan't to argue that here, perhaps never.
"See, for someone to make a profit, someone else has to make a loss.."
Here I think you are wrong. Here is a simple thought experiment.
You have a green thumb but are terrible with animals. I am great with animals, but my plants always die. Rather than each of us tending our animals and our gardens, if you will do all the gardening and I will tend all the animals, we can both make a profit. Right?
We may both end up being happier while we work as well which can be a major bonus.
"I heard a woman talking at one of RMS' presentations who said the best she had ever got out of a publisher was that they agreed to license her rights back to her if she handed over her rights. That's it. Otherwise they're not interested in publishing it."
This is interesting, what kind of books are you talking about?
I just pulled several novels down from the shelf and checked the copyright page.
The only one that seemed to have some sort of corporate copyright notice was Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. For all of the others, thbe copyright page claimed copyright in the author's name.
For good measure, I pulled down some of my programming/computer books and checked their copyright pages.
They all showed corporate copyright notices, even going back to Rodney Zaks' From Chips To Systems which has a 1981 copyright date.
Any authors of each type of book care to comment and enlighten us?
Practically, what is the difference in the copyright page showing the author versus the publisher anyway? I mean, the author would normally give some exclusive, regional publishing rights to the publisher for a particular format right?
This is interesting info as I had heard that book authors did not face nearly the same problems as music creators in relation to not owning their copyrights.
Any other authors of books run into this? Any book authors have their book published while still retaining ownership of their copyrights?
"I take pictures. I release them under a the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 license. If people want to use them to create art, they're welcome to do so (and many have.)"
I am doing something similar... They will be released here:
My thinking is I will put up 1024x768 as CC BY-SA and sell rights to higher resolutions. If I ever reach predetermined (variable) income on a particular shot, a higher resolution copy will go up CC BY-SA. And so on.
If non-commercial only prevented selling, I would not be so leery of it, there are just too many things that could be considered commercial and get you sued that have no commercial intentions and no profit potential that I intend to stay clear of NC works as ones to build on.
Can you spell out the point for those of us who are not too swift at this time of day?
"Free for non-commercial use means that it's free for non-commercial use. It doesn't stop being free for non-commercial use just because you want to sell it."
You are mistaken if you think that the only thing non-commercial would prevent is someone selling your work.
Except that fair use might allow it and override your non-commercial wishes, it would prevent a class being taught on your work in a college that had tuition. Right?
Also, I think we are in one of those free vs free (libre vs gratis) threads.
IIRC you were CC BY-NC-ND. I only just thought this as I mostly use CC BY-SA and don't think too much about the other options, but isn't this more like Freeware than Free Software. (If you know the usual uses of those terms.) I could easily be wrong about this. I can't remember off the top if freeware has NC leanings. Still I think we are in a libre vs gratis discussion here.
"Yet that what copyright holders want when they demand that you pay "rent" for their product for 75 years. They're demanding continuous profit for something they did once. They're demanding payment for every second of joy I might derive from their already paid for work."
What's worse is that often the person collecting the rent is not the creator. So they are demanding rent on something they never did in the first place. And often, the person who did do it, get's no rent. Right?
"Your rights to property are determined by the society you live in. They are NOT absolute or inherent."
Don't give in to the intellectual property meme. Resist. A monkey wrench once in a while may help as well.
Push for intellectual property tax here and there. Don't have to let on if you are serious or not. Just the thought of it probably makes some quake in their boots.
I came late to this thread, but would you not have to be violating the competitor's copyrights for them to force you to comply?
If playing with GPL code, the most simple protection is to supply complete source with all binaries. You would then have completely fulfilled those particular obligations under the GPL and are gold in that respect.
You could, I guess, still have issues with respect to credit, etc, but, I think the big issue is giving out binaries without source. Just don't do it.
"They told me flat out that the object of copyright was to protect PUBLISHED works (that is, made available to the public one way or another), and therefore something that was not published could not be copyrighted."
While I think that was true at one time, I think things have changed. How long ago did you ask? Care to ask again? (And let us know the answer?)
"It's not an exact parallel, but you get the idea:)"
Yes, but since this copyright is a government granted monopoly on copying, etc. It would be kind of like they gave you the land to build on in the first place. (Again, not an exact parallel, but you get the idea ~;-)
And now you have disappeared, are not taking care of the property they gave you, can't be contacted for them to collect property taxes, etc.
So, for the first year after the notice is posted, it is not copyleft, if the copyright holder does not surface in that year, it goes copyleft. Please note, that even though it goes copyleft, the copyleft license could be structured in such a way that the big, monied players will not want to use that license and would still pay for a standard license for which the UN or the government would collect and bank the fees on your behalf.
If you ever show up, you get the fees but not any growth on the investments. The growth could go half to the government or the UN (collecting body) and half to fund artists making copyleft works.
"Well, I'm not sure the gov't (who would have to approve any such plan) can rightfully decide whether to copyleft orphaned works..."
Well, since we are not talking natural rights but government created and granted rights in the first place, they can do pretty much what they decide to do and have been doing so for a while now. Just mostly (completely?) in the other direction.
"All the fun of the current system plus the copyright never expires and the money goes to the government for revenue and to pay for some idiot to take pictures of his meth lab and call it art."
You missed the point, I don't know if that was on purpose. There would be no extension to the term of the copyright. It could even be written in that if the works are not claimed in, say, five years, they are exempt from any further copyright extensions passed into law.
"Please stay out of government."
No worries there, I fully intend to stay very far away from that.
"Just require documented efforts to contact owner before publishing or using the copyrighted works, require publishing with original copyright notice, and if the owner surfaces and wants money, have an arbitration of percentage of profits to be awarded to owner."
How about just advertise intent to publish in some federal register (set up for the purpose?) and if no objections are published by the copyright owner, go for it. Then if they surface, your plan takes over. Person putting in intent to publish would have to pay for copyright owner's reasonable costs to respond if any.
all the best,
drew
p.s. Actually, I think it might be better if such works fell into a copyleft state, but any improvements would be welcome.
"When is slashdot going to allow https comment posting?"
What, so that they will have to actually crawl slashdot to see what you posted? Actually it might be a little better as your ip will then not be seen and as an AC you are gold.
"Also, I think patents and especially copyright should be held by the original creator and not by companies, nor should it be transferrable. If you didn't invent/create something, you cannot hold the patent/copyright. How can you claim to 'own' an idea/creative work if it didn't spawn from your brain ?"
Not that I particularly like the way the current system is working, but how can the creator "own" something if he cannot sell it? This is a tough problem to solve. Any good ideas?
"Just because sf.net has 100,000 unfinished mp3 labelers available doesn't mean we should get rid of the copyright system which has served us well for over 100 years."
If it is serving us so well, why do the big boys keep finding a need to tweak it to their benefit. If they can validly, in your mind, call for these tweaks, why is it not permitted for others to call for tweaks in their interests?
"The only problem they are trying to address is that copyright was changed in a way that caused it to no longer add to the public domain. You no longer have to register published works for copyright. This can make it very difficult to track down the owner to get permission to re-publish it. Thus we now have a large body of work that no-one is utilizing. It's wasted."
"Say for instance, you find a nice picture you want to incorporate and maybe it looks quite old, but maybe its unclear whether copyright has expired."
What about this idea?
Can't find copyright owner?
Compulsory license applies. Fees paid to government. Invested by government in safe investments. Government keeps half of profits on investments and other half goes to pay authors who create copyleft works. Actual copyright owners who find their works being used under a compulsory can claim monies fgrom the government. (Can't get the profits earned in the meantime though.
Compulsory license still applies to the works in question and to any derivatives.
Slashdot Mirror
"That doesn't actually mean anything. The copyright notice can be in the name of the author and the author can still have handed their rights over to the company. It's a contractional obligation."
I know, but as I have always understood it, an author might sell the north american first publishing rights to one entity and the european first publishing rights to another entity, etc.
Is this not so?
all the best,
drew
If your major contention aligns with the thought that trans-national mega corporate capitalism is wonked and needs at the least some tweaking, then I don't wan't to argue that here, perhaps never.
"See, for someone to make a profit, someone else has to make a loss.."
Here I think you are wrong. Here is a simple thought experiment.
You have a green thumb but are terrible with animals. I am great with animals, but my plants always die. Rather than each of us tending our animals and our gardens, if you will do all the gardening and I will tend all the animals, we can both make a profit. Right?
We may both end up being happier while we work as well which can be a major bonus.
all the best,
drew
"I heard a woman talking at one of RMS' presentations who said the best she had ever got out of a publisher was that they agreed to license her rights back to her if she handed over her rights. That's it. Otherwise they're not interested in publishing it."
A %22drew%20Roberts%22
This is interesting, what kind of books are you talking about?
I just pulled several novels down from the shelf and checked the copyright page.
The only one that seemed to have some sort of corporate copyright notice was Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. For all of the others, thbe copyright page claimed copyright in the author's name.
For good measure, I pulled down some of my programming/computer books and checked their copyright pages.
They all showed corporate copyright notices, even going back to Rodney Zaks' From Chips To Systems which has a 1981 copyright date.
Any authors of each type of book care to comment and enlighten us?
Practically, what is the difference in the copyright page showing the author versus the publisher anyway? I mean, the author would normally give some exclusive, regional publishing rights to the publisher for a particular format right?
all the best,
drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3
This is interesting info as I had heard that book authors did not face nearly the same problems as music creators in relation to not owning their copyrights.
A %22drew%20Roberts%22
Any other authors of books run into this? Any book authors have their book published while still retaining ownership of their copyrights?
all the best,
drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3
"I take pictures. I release them under a the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 license. If people want to use them to create art, they're welcome to do so (and many have.)"
A %22drew%20Roberts%22
I am doing something similar... They will be released here:
http://zotz.openphoto.net/
Only one up so far.
My thinking is I will put up 1024x768 as CC BY-SA and sell rights to higher resolutions. If I ever reach predetermined (variable) income on a particular shot, a higher resolution copy will go up CC BY-SA. And so on.
If non-commercial only prevented selling, I would not be so leery of it, there are just too many things that could be considered commercial and get you sued that have no commercial intentions and no profit potential that I intend to stay clear of NC works as ones to build on.
all the best,
drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3
"Yes, and it was done to illustrate a point."
A %22drew%20Roberts%22
Can you spell out the point for those of us who are not too swift at this time of day?
"Free for non-commercial use means that it's free for non-commercial use. It doesn't stop being free for non-commercial use just because you want to sell it."
You are mistaken if you think that the only thing non-commercial would prevent is someone selling your work.
Except that fair use might allow it and override your non-commercial wishes, it would prevent a class being taught on your work in a college that had tuition. Right?
Also, I think we are in one of those free vs free (libre vs gratis) threads.
IIRC you were CC BY-NC-ND. I only just thought this as I mostly use CC BY-SA and don't think too much about the other options, but isn't this more like Freeware than Free Software. (If you know the usual uses of those terms.) I could easily be wrong about this. I can't remember off the top if freeware has NC leanings. Still I think we are in a libre vs gratis discussion here.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3
all the best,
drew
"Yet that what copyright holders want when they demand that you pay "rent" for their product for 75 years. They're demanding continuous profit for something they did once. They're demanding payment for every second of joy I might derive from their already paid for work."
What's worse is that often the person collecting the rent is not the creator. So they are demanding rent on something they never did in the first place. And often, the person who did do it, get's no rent. Right?
all the best,
drew
"Your rights to property are determined by the society you live in. They are NOT absolute or inherent."
h t_Term_Reform/Taxation
Don't give in to the intellectual property meme. Resist. A monkey wrench once in a while may help as well.
Push for intellectual property tax here and there. Don't have to let on if you are serious or not. Just the thought of it probably makes some quake in their boots.
http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Copyrig
I didn't write that by the way.
all the best,
drew
I like CC BY-SA myself. I would like it if we could drop the BY rather than simply waive it in the 2.x series though.
A %22drew%20Roberts%22
If the BY-SA creates a more vibrant pool of work, perhaps the CC system will self correct. We can hope.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3
all the best,
drew
I came late to this thread, but would you not have to be violating the competitor's copyrights for them to force you to comply?
If playing with GPL code, the most simple protection is to supply complete source with all binaries. You would then have completely fulfilled those particular obligations under the GPL and are gold in that respect.
You could, I guess, still have issues with respect to credit, etc, but, I think the big issue is giving out binaries without source. Just don't do it.
all the best,
drew
"They told me flat out that the object of copyright was to protect PUBLISHED works (that is, made available to the public one way or another), and therefore something that was not published could not be copyrighted."
While I think that was true at one time, I think things have changed. How long ago did you ask? Care to ask again? (And let us know the answer?)
BTW, I have appreciated the discussions.
all the best,
drew
"It's not an exact parallel, but you get the idea :)"
Yes, but since this copyright is a government granted monopoly on copying, etc. It would be kind of like they gave you the land to build on in the first place. (Again, not an exact parallel, but you get the idea ~;-)
And now you have disappeared, are not taking care of the property they gave you, can't be contacted for them to collect property taxes, etc.
So, for the first year after the notice is posted, it is not copyleft, if the copyright holder does not surface in that year, it goes copyleft. Please note, that even though it goes copyleft, the copyleft license could be structured in such a way that the big, monied players will not want to use that license and would still pay for a standard license for which the UN or the government would collect and bank the fees on your behalf.
If you ever show up, you get the fees but not any growth on the investments. The growth could go half to the government or the UN (collecting body) and half to fund artists making copyleft works.
Bam Sookie!
all the best,
drew
"Well, I'm not sure the gov't (who would have to approve any such plan) can rightfully decide whether to copyleft orphaned works..."
Well, since we are not talking natural rights but government created and granted rights in the first place, they can do pretty much what they decide to do and have been doing so for a while now. Just mostly (completely?) in the other direction.
all the best,
drew
"Fees should probably be prorated according to intended use, too."
You could even place the works under some sort of copyleft license that allows for commercial use.
That way, if you want what you distribute to be copyleft, no fees are due and you can pay fees to waive the copyleft requirements on your use.
all the best,
drew
"All the fun of the current system plus the copyright never expires and the money goes to the government for revenue and to pay for some idiot to take pictures of his meth lab and call it art."
You missed the point, I don't know if that was on purpose. There would be no extension to the term of the copyright. It could even be written in that if the works are not claimed in, say, five years, they are exempt from any further copyright extensions passed into law.
"Please stay out of government."
No worries there, I fully intend to stay very far away from that.
all the best,
drew
"In the exact same way record labels / patent owners don't sell the ownership of a piece of IP : license the right to use the IP."
How would this impact the first sale doctrine, if at all?
all the best,
drew
"In the exact same way record labels / patent owners don't sell the ownership of a piece of IP : license the right to use the IP."
Sure, ok, so more how things work with books than with music?
all the best,
drew
"I strongly support the concept of having works for which the copyright holder cannot be identified fall into the public domain."
Would it not be better if they fell into some copyleft state that permitted commercial use? Think about the possibilities.
all the best,
drew
"Just require documented efforts to contact owner before publishing or using the copyrighted works, require publishing with original copyright notice, and if the owner surfaces and wants money, have an arbitration of percentage of profits to be awarded to owner."
How about just advertise intent to publish in some federal register (set up for the purpose?) and if no objections are published by the copyright owner, go for it. Then if they surface, your plan takes over. Person putting in intent to publish would have to pay for copyright owner's reasonable costs to respond if any.
all the best,
drew
p.s. Actually, I think it might be better if such works fell into a copyleft state, but any improvements would be welcome.
"When is slashdot going to allow https comment posting?"
What, so that they will have to actually crawl slashdot to see what you posted? Actually it might be a little better as your ip will then not be seen and as an AC you are gold.
all the best,
drew
"Also, I think patents and especially copyright should be held by the original creator and not by companies, nor should it be transferrable. If you didn't invent/create something, you cannot hold the patent/copyright. How can you claim to 'own' an idea/creative work if it didn't spawn from your brain ?"
Not that I particularly like the way the current system is working, but how can the creator "own" something if he cannot sell it? This is a tough problem to solve. Any good ideas?
all the best,
drew
"Just because sf.net has 100,000 unfinished mp3 labelers available doesn't mean we should get rid of the copyright system which has served us well for over 100 years."
If it is serving us so well, why do the big boys keep finding a need to tweak it to their benefit. If they can validly, in your mind, call for these tweaks, why is it not permitted for others to call for tweaks in their interests?
all the best,
drew
"The only problem they are trying to address is that copyright was changed in a way that caused it to no longer add to the public domain. You no longer have to register published works for copyright. This can make it very difficult to track down the owner to get permission to re-publish it. Thus we now have a large body of work that no-one is utilizing. It's wasted."
i gh t_Term_Reform/Default
A possible solution to this problem:
http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Copyr
all the best,
drew
"Say for instance, you find a nice picture you want to incorporate and maybe it looks quite old, but maybe its unclear whether copyright has expired."
What about this idea?
Can't find copyright owner?
Compulsory license applies. Fees paid to government. Invested by government in safe investments. Government keeps half of profits on investments and other half goes to pay authors who create copyleft works. Actual copyright owners who find their works being used under a compulsory can claim monies fgrom the government. (Can't get the profits earned in the meantime though.
Compulsory license still applies to the works in question and to any derivatives.
all the best,
drew
" why? if a copyright owner can not be found, a corporation can not buy the work. I see no corporate interest here."
it could be in the corporate interests that there be no public domain as those works compete with the corporate owned ones.
naturally what they might like even better is if works passing into the public domain were only useable by corporations.
all the best,
drew