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Copyright and Copy Rights
Posted by
michael
on Fri Nov 22, 2002 02:58 PM
from the ten-wrongs-make-a-right dept.
from the ten-wrongs-make-a-right dept.
neocon writes "Today's National Review Online has an interesting
piece from John Bloom of UPI on the origin of Copy Rights (what Copyrights really are) and the
current attacks on them in Congress and elsewhere."
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Great article but completely pointless. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sick of reading about the ills of society and corporate america. If anyone actually gave a shit we wouldn't have the Republican Nation.
Americans need to shit or get off the pot. Either we have rights and freedoms or we don't.
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're referring to the Republican party, then I think you're a bit off base. I'm strongly under the impression that both major parties are equally bad when it comes to issues like copyright. If the EFF were a political action committee, they would have difficulty finding any candidatees to support. The problem is that candidates are not catering to individual rights because there is no lobbying effort to back them, the are no campaign donations keyed to them, and there is no perceived voter demographic that will vote primarily on them.
Parent
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:4, Interesting)
I read "Republican Nation" as not a Nation run by "The Republicans" but a Nation that is a Republic, as opposed to a Democracy, which of course we are. A Democracy is a country that is run by the people. We actually have a Republic which is run by people we elect because we are to stupid to pass our own laws.
Which of course we are. Two years ago here in Massachusettes there was a referendum question for "Clean Elections" campaign finance. It set aside tax dollars to go to candidates for campaigning who met certain criteria. However, the legislature decided that the people really didn't understand the ballot question and didn't know what they were voting for. So they didn't fund the law and the media got all up in arms that the government wasn't doing what the people wanted. Fast forward to today. Another question that repealed this law went on the ballot and was worded such that it was clear that tax dollars were to be spent on it. This also passed overwhelmingly. Turned out the stage Leg. was right in deciding that we the people didn't know what the hell we were doing.
However, I do know that I don't like these copyright laws. What can we do to fix it?
Parent
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:4, Insightful)
My goodness, do you want some cheese with that whine? The reason we have a Republican Nation is that Americans "do give a shit" and voted for the Republicans. Anyone that didn't vote and complains about Republicans in power has only themselves to blame.
Americans need to shit or get off the pot. Either we have rights and freedoms or we don't.
So you are saying that only Democrats care about rights and freedoms? What about the right to keep and bear arms? What about the freedom to control the fruits of your labor?
Take off your blinders...
Parent
voting! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:voting! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're half right. Both parties are generally against efforts to improve their opponent's voter turnout. One of the interesting things about the Motor-Voter bill was in many cases it helped Republican candidates, at which point they changed their tune quite a bit (as did the Dems in those areas.. they were less gung ho about after).
The Dem's shit stinks just as bad as the Reps when it comes to manipulating the election system in their favor.
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, let's be fair. Most Americans who could vote, didn't. About a third of the voters in this country cast a ballot in the midterm elections. So I think it's more accurate to say that of the Americans who do give a shit, a slim but notable majority voted for Republicans.
And I think it's fair to say that most Americans don't give a shit whether Disney holds on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie." I know I couldn't care less about that. It makes absolutely no difference to my life one way or another, except in principle.
Can somebody convince me otherwise? I feel kind of bad about being so indifferent about the Bono act. Can somebody give me an example of a situation in which a work's not being copyrighted-- that is, being in the public domain-- led to some kind of wonderful thing happening?
Parent
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obvious case is It's a Wonderful Life.
The movie was a dismal failure in the box office when released. It languished from that point on until it lapsed into the public domain because a copyright extention was not filed. The networks and independant channels picked it up and used it as filler during Holiday season -- not because they considered it good, or warm and Christmas-y, but because it was cheap. Real cheap. As in free.
If it weren't for this then what is now considered a Christmas classic would've probably rotted away in a vault somewhere. And while I'm sure there are people who wish it would, because they've seen it too much, most people do consider it a good movie, at least the first time or two.
Oh... and ever wondered why it isn't blasted all over the TV during the holidays now? Because it was discovered that while the movie is in the public domain, the screenplay (or maybe the soundtrack) is not. So that copyright is now being used to control the work as a whole.
There are thousands of books and hundreds of movies that were written in the early 1900s that are being lost because they're under copyright but are literally disintegrating. If they were in the public domain then groups like the Guttenburg Project could save them.
The key point is to remember that Copyright laws are there to enrich the public domain. Without copyright law then there is nothing illegal about someone stealing your work in whole. It's generally agreed that people would like recompensation for time spent, and so a limited duration copyright encourages people to publish works. The limited duration ensures that the work does eventually return to its natural state - free. Copyrights are a contrevience to encourage contribution to humanity. I think they're a necessary one as well. But I also think that copyright law has gone too far to one extreme and needs to be set aright.
Parent
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even Hollywood is getting pissed off about the whole copyright scene. Writers are running out of things to write about. Movie ideas are so expensive because everything has been done already. That's why we're getting re-hashes like Oceans 11 (1960 [imdb.com], 2001 [imdb.com]), and the James Bond [imdb.com] franchise.
In another example, I know that greeting card company hired out a friend of mine [paulmischler.com] to come in for a Santa Claus photo shoot. Why? Because the image we most associate with Santa Claus [snopes.com] is owned by Coke, and they needed to have a new model to base illustrations on to meet the "original work" standard in the copyright clause to avoid lawsuits. (Or repel them if Coke would sue anyway).
It's our culture that we're pissing away when we let copyright get extended too far.
Parent
Re:Great article but completely pointless. (Score:3, Informative)
A good article, with some minor flaws (Score:5, Insightful)
It does raise the issue that copyright is not a consequence of natural law, but of positive law (eg, there wouldn't be copyright without an act of the sovereign.
The part of it I disagree with somewhat is his characterization of copyright as not really being about property rights, but about free speech. Copyright is very explicitly a property trade off: "We will give you the following property right in return for that property eventually reverting to the public." Copyright owners often make the mistake of speaking as if copyright exists for their benefit. It doesn't. The entire point of copyright is to encourage the creation of intellectual property for the benefit of the public. The fact that the mechanism by which the creation of that intellectual property is achieved is by granting a benefit to the author is purely incidental.
Re:A good article, with some minor flaws (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A good article, with some minor flaws (Score:3, Interesting)
When the author said that Congress passed the Bono act because Congress viewed the issue as a property rights issue, he meant that Congress was ignoring the benefit to the public. Congress was in effect stating that the benefit to the public was what was incidental and that the mechanism of copyright existed to protect the property rights of authors.
Re:A good article, with some minor flaws (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyrights expire. Property rights don't.
There are "fair use" rights with information. There are no similar rights with real property. I can't "borrow" Hillary Rosen's car for "scholarly purposes", but I can copy her words.
The copyright on a work remains with the copyright holder, even after I buy it.
A piece of physical property is mine when I buy it, and not even the government can touch it without the appropriate legal papers.
The copyright follows the work, even as it is copied or changed into derivative works. Physical property only exists in one form at any given moment.
These differences should make you think twice about calling copyrights "property rights" without caveats. If the Framers wanted them treated as physical property, they would've put it in the Constitution.
Re:A good article, with some minor flaws (Score:5, Insightful)
"You are completely and utterly incorrect. Property rights can and do expire. For example, I can grant you real estate in perpetuity ("fee simple"), or I can grant you a life estate. Or an estate for a certain length of time."
Then it isn't _yours_! Please, do not stretch this already horribly mutilated property to copyright analogy. Trying to graft the idea of copyright onto physical property via 'Intellectual Property' is crap.
Again, you're quite simply wrong. Fair use is not a right at all, but a (statutory) affirmative defense to infringement. You probably could "borrow" Hillary's car if she leased it or licensed it to you."
Again with this tortured analogy. 'Fair Use' has nothing to do with property and it is not analogous to borrowing someone's property. Copyright is just that, a limited exclusive right to make _copies_ of a work. It has nothing to do with property which you would have learned if you read the article.
"They didn't want copyrights treated as physical property. They wanted them treated as intellectual property.
In case you haven't been listening, the term 'Intellectual property' is bogus double speak that was not used by the framers and really has nothing to do with the limited exclusive right to make _copies_ of a work. The framers had no intention of turning ideas into some kind of possession. Yes, you might say the authors of a work 'possess' the copy right, but they do not 'possess' the actual work or idea
See Harper, "It should not be forgotten that the Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression. By establishing a marketable right to the use of one's expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas."
This does not in anyway imply a 'property right'
The exclusive right for a limited time is unquestionably, without any doubt whatsoever, a property right."
No, it is not and no matter how much you plead to the contrary, it is not a 'property right'. Of course, you are free to use whatever semantics you like, but the common understanding of 'property right' does a disservice to the true intention and mechanism of the copy right. If you would open your eyes and read the article you might see why.
Parent
Nice and to the point (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright was a legal system for protecting a creator's opportunities and placing things in the public domain. A win-win situation in the minds of the founders, I'm sure.
It's been turned into a way to hold onto information for a ridiculous (eternal?) amount of time. Something comes up, a few more campaign donations go out, and it gets changed again.
'nuff said.
one thing's for sure (Score:3, Interesting)
the word "copyright" is quickly becoming a farce, at least in corporate and capitolist america. its sad how this issue has been ignored and cleanly swept under the rug. but as always and as mentioned earlier, the rich and powerful will have the last say.
Re:one thing's for sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? Other laws, drafted hundreds of years ago, are just as relevant today as they were then with no changes at all. What makes copyright law so different?
Don't make the mistake of assuming that the time in which you live is somehow fundamentally different from the time that came before. It hasn't been true yet in all of human history; what makes you think it's true now?
I found it interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I found it interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Shortening copyrights would redistribute the entertainment-money pie in favor of those who are making new content, rather than those who retain the rights to things done years ago.
Parent
Re:I found it interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. (the principled one) Many Republicans genuinely believe in the free market, which is not the same thing as corporate statism. Corporations that live off artificial government monopolies (e.g. indefinitely extended copyrights provided by coin-operated legislators) are "rent-seekers" (a term of art meaning someone who lives off such special privileges, not a landlord trying to get a tenant to pay his bill ;-) ).
2. (the cynical one) Hollywood is a big money machine for the Democrats -- what do you think inspired Hollings (D-Disney) to introduce his ban on general-purpose computers?
Parent
Re:I found it interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It just shows that those who blithely put all Republicans into one stereotype are undereducated.
Parent
Share Knowledge (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to have a long, long discussion with my girlfriend about copyright extensions, and why they are wrong before she finally accepted. The public has become so used to large corporations controlling everything that it seems foriegn to them that intellectual property should be released into general ownership after its creator's death. SHARE THE KNOWLEDGE. Mickey Mouse should, and I would argue does, in fact belong to everyone now!
I prefer Lessig's (Score:5, Informative)
Lawrence Lessig's 30 (or so) minute speech on copyrights has been an excellent inspiration for me. Inspired me to join the EFF
I greatly encourage everyone to go to the link above.
still relevant? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of good arguments against copyright law, including that it impedes the free exchange of ideas, adds to corporate exploitation of the working class, and contributes to intellectual, industrial, and artistic stagnation in general. It's pretty easy to see the difference between the Rennaisance (pre-copyright) and the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (post-copyright). We're not even in the same league anymore, and it's easy to see why.
The argument in the article, though, is that copyright law, as originally intended, was designed to protect the rights of media consumers, not media producers. That's all well and good, but it's to some extent a non-sequitor. I mean, we're not living in 1776 and we're not delegates of the Colonial Congress: it's 2002 and we're Linux geeks on Slashdot. Media and copyright have both evolved so incredibly since those bygone days that who's to say *what* the Founding Fathers would think of "ripping" a "mix CD" of "n*Sync?" Look at how difficult it is for the Supreme Court to understand the First and Second Amendments, which are pretty freaking straightforward in comparison; do you really think we have a *prayer* of understanding the original copyright laws?
Re:still relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you couldn't be more wrong; copyright in no way impedes the "free exchange of ideas." Copyright doesn't protect ideas from being copied, it protects expression from being copied. You can't copyright an idea at all, period. Copyright doesn't stagnate the creation of ideas, and by any standard it certainly encourages creativity. You compare us to the Renaissance, when a few staggering works of genius were created, generally under the patronage of kings and popes. I don't have figures, but surely the number of, say, books, works of music, and graphic images being created today dwarfs the output of the Renaissance by several orders of magnitude. That says nothing about quality, of course, but I'd like to think that a genius is a genius regardless of what the government regulations are. Could Michaelangelo have painted the Sistine Chapel without money for paint? No. Copyright is one method of making sure he can fund his works.
Now, reasonable people can (and do!) disagree about the length of copyright restrictions and whether it's appropriate to extend them retroactively. I personally feel that this is moving the goalposts. But to argue that copyright is somehow completely outdated and has no use anymore is to present yourself, very firmly, as someone that has probably never created any intellectual work of significant value.
Yes, I do we have more than a prayer. I think it's pretty easy to understand copyright law, if you try (some may find the copyright FAQ [copyright.gov] useful).
Law is something that is supposed to last. Good laws -- and I think the copyright laws, as they were originally intended to apply, are good law -- take changing technology into account. "We have Linux now!" is not an adequate reason to dismiss a thoughtful analysis of property rights. Does that mean we should unquestioningly accept everything and never try to change it? No. But it does mean that we need to understand the reasons things work the way they do so that we know how to change them, instead of just saying "We're so cyber we don't need all this old stuff."
Parent
http://illegal-art.org/ (Score:5, Informative)
This was a recent show in NYC which displayed works which have almost been suppressed out of existance by Corporate culture. You can find articles on copyeahright, music, videos and other forms of expression.
Article doesn't discuss Sup. Ct.s reluctance (Score:3, Interesting)
High court weighs copyright law [com.com]
The point is that bad policy isn't always unconstitutional, and the court may take that as reason to disagree without acting.
In general, this article is very light on the legal specifics behind this case and this law, but there are good resources out there, including specifically:
Opposing Copyright Protection [asu.edu]
corporations and "lifespan" (Score:5, Insightful)
A reasonable idea has been that a copyright should last as long as the author lives, plus a period of time for his estate. No, that wasn't the original law, but it seems to make a kind of sense. As long as an author lives, he has exclusive control of his work, unless he voluntarily transfers that control to somebody else. (In which case the clock starts ticking.)
This idea breaks when you consider that corporations are legal persons, and that they can own copyrights. The copyright for the Mickey Mouse cartoons isn't owned by Walt Disney, the deceased person. They're owned by Disney, the extant corporation. And corporations have no natural lifespan. So how long should a copyright last?
I've never heard a good argument on this question. Everybody seems to propose an arbitrary number-- 28 years, 75 years, 99 years-- without giving any good reason for it.
How's this for an idea. Copyright is granted automatically for a period of 30 years. (Yeah, there's that arbitrary number I just bitched about. But in this case, I picked it because it's more-or-less one generation.) If you want to extend your copyright, you're free to do so for some sort of proportional, sliding-scale fee. The justification would be that the copyright holder is doing society a minor but nontrivial harm by holding on to his work, but that that harm could be offset by the additional revenue to the government. If Disney wants to hold on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie" forever, they're free to do so if they can cough up the greenbacks.
It would probably take a Constitutional amendment to make an idea like that one legal, but stranger things have happened.
Re:corporations and "lifespan" (Score:4, Insightful)
The justification would be that the copyright holder is doing society a minor but nontrivial harm by holding on to his work, but that that harm could be offset by the additional revenue to the government. If Disney wants to hold on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie" forever, they're free to do so if they can cough up the greenbacks.
They do. That's exactly what we're complaining about. They pay a congressman, he puts forth a bill for a longer copyright, and they get a longer copyright.
The idea that a corporation should be able to pay the government to defend itself against the rights of the people is completely ridiculous; in fact, it creates a serious conflict of interest. What's more, at some point it has to be recognized that no amount of greenbacks are worth owning information in perpetuity; personally, I'd rather have "Steamboat Willie" usable by anyone than all the mended highways in the country paid for from Disney's coffers. There are some things you can't put a price tag on. Now, someone think up a good Mastercard-ad joke. ;)
Parent
Idea isn't the breaking point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought, instead of trying to massage the idea around corporations being legal persons, we remove this silly fiction of corporations being legal persons.
Corporations are a collective of people. Period. They are not persons. They have no right to free speech, they have no right to bear arms, they have no right to vote. Each individual within the corporation has that right, certainly, but when they are acting "as the collective", then those rights go out the window and society can choose to regulate them as much as society wants.
This Legal Persons crap was bought and paid for by the corporations a long time ago. It's time we took it back.
People are persons. Corporations aren't.
Parent
My idea: 100 years max but *only* if it's in print (Score:5, Interesting)
1) No copyright should ever under any circumstance exceed 100 years. A nice round figure that's easy to compute and no one can really complain that it's too short. Personally I'd like it much shorter, but this is a figure I think everyone can agree on as an absolute maximum.
2) If a copyrighted work is ever out of publication, then a clock starts ticking: depending on the class of material, if the total time out of publication exceeds the time for that class, then the item becomes public domain. These times are cumulative to keep a company from thwarting it by offering items for 1 day every few years or so. Such categories might be 20 years for books and other printed material, 10 years for audio and video, and 3 years for computer programs. The idea here is to get abandoned stuff into public domain before it totally loses all value. (This would also have the result that Microsoft would have to keep selling Windows 98 or else 3 years later everyone could copy it for free.) After all, does anyone have any doubt that PKZIP will be totally useless in 2101 except for historical purposes?
3) If an author sells the copyright on his works, and it subsequently goes out of print, all copyrights revert to said author immediately. This will let said author possibly get some value out of it before the copyright expires due to inactivity.
There are some details that would have to be ironed out in a system like this (e.g. what's to keep a company from having something 'in print' but only sold at some exorbitant rate), but hell, it's much better than what we have now.
Parent
My two cents on modifying copyright law. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we should change copyright law so that all copyrights last for 14 years, with an option by the copyright holder to extend that copyright for an additional 14 years, for a maximum of some really long period of time (say, 280 years or something silly). That way, if an entity is still around who cares about it's copyrights (such as the Disney Corporation), they can simply get an extension to their copyrights for as long as they like, without fscking up the natural expiration of copyrights on the 99% of stuff whose owners are no longer around.
That's the odd thing about the current copyright regime, by the way: it seems to me that a copyright can survive its author, and without an established estate who can oversee the copyright, the use of such copyrighted works without anyone who actually controls those copyrights is impossible. That is, instead of doing what our founding fathers wanted--to allow these works to pass into the public domain for the larger good--these works, being impossible to legally copy, will pass into oblivion.
That's why I believe someone alive and active needs to step up and file for a copyright extension ever 14 years. (And, in the case where someone screws up the filing, give them an automatic 1 year buffer or something to get the paperwork straight, so something doesn't slip into public domain because a request gets lost in the mail.)
Re:My two cents on modifying copyright law. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to suggest "chessboard copyright", as follows: The term of an unregistered copyright shall be five years. Thereinafter, the copyright must be registered. The registration fee shall be one dollar for the sixth year; two dollars for the seventh year; and so forth -- for each subsequent year, the fee doubles.
The rationale here is that the cost of copyright to society is not merely linear with each year -- rather, it increases exponentially, since it cuts off the creation of whole genealogies of derivative works. Imagine if derivative works of the first Linux distribution were forbidden -- we would not simply have been deprived of the second Linux distribution, but of all the diverse branches of that family tree.
Chessboard copyright permits the holding-out of copyright over works which are exceptionally profitable -- such as Mickey Mouse -- for around twenty-five years. (The registration fee for the twenty-fifth year is $2^19 = about half a million dollars, still quite safe for a media mogul's profit margins.) However, soon after that it becomes untenable and shortly exceeds the size of the world economy. This is, of course, intentional.
Tweaks to this system might include adjusting the duration of unregistered copyright, the base fee, the exponent coefficient, and whether or not these values are the same for all classes of works (e.g. books vs. software vs. audio). If unregistered copyright lasted ten years, and the base fee was a penny, then a forty year copyright would cost just over 5.3 million dollars in the fortieth year.
That might be about right.
Clarification: This is a thought experiment, intended to balance between highly profitable companies' desire to hold copyright and the public's demand for innovative derivative works. I consider copyright itself much more problematic than this "proposal" suggests.
Parent
Weekly Standard as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Free Speech issue (Score:3, Insightful)
There seems to be some disagreement over what forms of IP are speech, and what is more properly described as property. I think the framers of the constitution intended for book, songs, images to be a form of speech, and intended to grant their authors exclusive rights for a limited time, up to 28 years. I think they knew what they were doing.
A Limited Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig formulates it a little differently than this article. I found the book too preachy and a little thin, but the formulation is precise, thoughtful, and gets at a tension inherent here.
The formulation is that copyright is a time limited monopoly granted to the creator of the work to use the work for economic gain if they choose to. He argues that there is a balance to be struck between private ownership and the "commons." The monopoly is in some sense necessary to get people to create things, or at least protect them if they want to create things and reap direct economic benefit from what they've created by charging for certain types of use of that material. The limitation is necessary to let everyone benefit from the creations of others by creating derivative works, distributing copies for cheap to one's friends, etc.
One important point that the article completely misses is that there are some places where the full blown copy right, whatever its term or conditions, should not apply. This includes public libraries and use of copyrighted source material in academic work, reviewing, etc. It is especially in these domains that free speech and copyright bump up against each other most violently. Eldred is about challenging the terms and conditions of copyright law, so it isn't really so much a free speech question as it is a question about what the appropriate bounds of the limited monopoly are.
But another question, and an important one, is which right takes precendence and when? When does the right to copy and restrict copying for a certain amount of time get trumped by the right to speak freely?
Of course, as the article points out, the limited monopoly has become and is becoming even more of an unlimited monopoly that powerful interests control. What's worse is that this monopoly is being used to damage our ability to carry out public discourse.
Fight the national One Strike law for public housing residents [viewfromtheground.com]
Make your snowballs (Score:5, Funny)
Hell must have frozen over...
10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained (Score:5, Interesting)
Great Read (Score:4, Insightful)
The Constitution is quite clear on the matter. It says copyrights are to be granted for "limited times." I don't know any definition of "limited" that would mean 75 years plus a 20-year extension plus the chance of getting another extension later. The whole issue was argued three centuries ago, and it was established as a principle of democracy that, when the author is dead, his work becomes the property of all.
Someone should send a copy of the constitution to our congressmen and senators. It's amazing that things like the Bono extension actually passed.
Anyone else starting to get that feeling that their vote, (and their right for that matter), is a waste when it comes to matters of the fed?
It reminds me of the way my Dad used to change the rules of cribbage to benefit his score counting. It didn't matter that the ruleback said he couldn't ( or shouldn't).
You Forget (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they have a lot more money than we have Constitution.
Parent
Let's bring back "Copy right" (Score:5, Interesting)
As a result, 99 percent of the public thinks that a copyright is some kind of formal legal document. They think you have to go get it, or protect it, or defend it, or preserve it, or buy it, or hire a lawyer to make sure you have it.
Fantastic point. From now on let's refer to "copyright" as "copy right". It's an informative and accurate meme that need to be spread. Who's with me?
Finally someone gets it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Disney's trademark of the character Mickey Mouse will never expire, but the copyrights to creative works in which he is depicted most certainly should. The framers of the Constitution understood creative works to be both an input and output of the creative process, and that copyrights should only be granted for the purpose of contributing to the progress of the arts and sciences. Why should no one be allowed to do to Disney what they continue to do to authors such as Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Planet?!)? This case is not about the length of time, as many misrepresent it. The petitioners agree that Congress has the right to set any length of time for copyright (save infinity), but the question is whether they can retroactively apply extensions (Walt isn't going to create more cartoons cause his copyrights suddenly got a few more years tacked on, so how does such legislation fit the purpose of promotion, which the clause explicitly outlines?), and whether that sort of legislation should be subject to appropriate intermediate first amendment analysis (which the lower courts refused to even consider).
-R
I *thought* that name sounded familiar... (Score:4, Informative)
For those of you who don't know who John Bloom is, check it out. [joebobbriggs.com]
You've also seen him in the movies. [imdb.com]
No blood, no breasts, one beast (Disney). Copyright-fu, literature-fu, argument-fu. Four stars. Joe-bob sez 'check it out.'
Michael Hart's (Project Gutenberg) Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
If the New York Times' estimates of 7 years for information doubling may be considered at all correct, then this is what will happen [to information in the Public Domain] in a United States under the new copyright law, EVEN IF we considered 100 percent of current information now be entered into the Public Domain as an incentive to let this law stand:
[i (unger) modified the lines in the following chart to make them shorter. each line originally said "x years x/x of today's information in the Public Domain x%".]
0 years 1/1
7 years 1/2
14 years 1/4
21 years 1/8
28 years 1/16
35 years 1/32
42 years 1/64
49 years 1/128
56 years 1/256
63 years 1/512
70 years 1/1024
77 years 1/2048
84 years 1/4096
91 years 1/8192
98 years 1/16384 info in Public Domain 0.006103515625%
Plus a small fraction if any of this year's copyrights are allowed to
expire.
Obviously the goal is to have virtually no public domain left at all. . .
Of course, there are people who will try to make this very NOT obvious!
Michael S. Hart
[email address snipped]
Project Gutenberg
Principal Instigator
"*Internet User ~#100*"
Licensing "God Bless America" (Score:5, Interesting)
Revenue is up since September 11, 2001. See Through the Night With a Light from a Buck [discussing...rences.com] for details.
Rights and Property Rights (Score:5, Informative)
In addition there are Statutory Rights -- rights which you get by virtue of statute. You can go to court to have these rights enforced, though Congress is free to amend the terms of the rights. The right to receive a Social Security pension if you meet the qualifications is a statutory right. If an official tries to deny you your benefits, you can go to court to force them to be paid, though Congress can and does set the amounts payable. Copyright is another statutory right -- it exists by virtue of a statute.
Property rights are rights which behave like tangible property. You can sell, lease, transfer and assign these rights. You can leave them to your heirs. They are alienable (in contrast to the inalienable rights in the beginning of this reply) becuase you can transfer them to another.
Copyright is property-like in this sense -- you can sell your copyright for cash, use it as collateral for a loan and leave it to your heirs (if it hasn't expired). As such, it's appropriate to describe Copyright as a property right.
The author is a tad incorrect... (Score:4, Interesting)
US Copyright law limits the duration for corporations to 96 years from date of creation. Had Mr. Bloom done a little bit of research he would have discovered this tidbit of info.
The "Is it property" Tempest in a Teapot (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another /. discussion on IP, yet another passionate rehash of IP as property vs. those who puke up a lung every time you suggest that it's "property".
It doesn't matter.
That's right. Let that sink in for a while. Let it fester. Let the rage build. Get it out. Scream. Hit your monitor. Done? No? Go ahead. Get it all out, I'll still be here. OK. Let's move on.
The real debate here is in deciding how much IP and its creators should be taxed. That's it. Whether there is a "social contract" or a "property right" is irrelevant. On one extreme are those who believe all IP should go immediately into the PD (Stallman, etc.). That's a 100% tax to the creator. On the other extreme are Disney lawyers who want to keep extending their ownership (zero tax). The answer is somewhere in the middle.
The founders knew the answer was in the middle. That's why they wrote things the way they did. Arguing about whether it's property or "property" is like arguing about the number of angels on the head of a pin (15,234 by the way).
Re:DMCA? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure he's not crazy about the DMCA either, but the Bono Act and the DMCA are two entirely different issues within the copyright debate. To have brought the DMCA into his article would only have confused his points.
Parent