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Disney Wins, Eldred (and everyone else) Loses
Posted by
michael
on Wed Jan 15, 2003 10:30 AM
from the copyright-is-permanent dept.
from the copyright-is-permanent dept.
hondo77 writes "In a 7-2 decision, The Supreme Court gave Disney what they wanted. Story just broke, no details yet." They're talking about the Eldred case, recently argued before the Supreme Court and mentioned on Slashdot many times. The upshot is that no works produced in the United States after the 1920's will ever go out of copyright. Opinions: Majority opinion, Stevens' dissent, Breyer's dissent.
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Illegal Art (Score:4, Informative)
Gotta figger time's running out.
-renard
Other nations (Score:5, Insightful)
That sucks, but if that's the world we live in... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That sucks, but if that's the world we live in. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Clarence Thomas book deal reached with HarperColli (Score:5, Interesting)
"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will receive more than $1 million for his memoirs from publisher HarperCollins.
Multiple publishers vied for the rights to Thomas' autobiography, which he started writing in 2001, but Thomas liked the package offered by the New York-based HarperCollins, including the editor assigned to work with him, people in the publishing industry with knowledge of the deal said Thursday.
The amount of the deal was not revealed, except that it was in seven figures. "
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
Disney (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright expiration is part of the business (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, but when the money was invested in these movies in the 1920's, 1930's, etc., it was done with full knowledge that eventually the copyright would expire and revenue from these works would dwindle. The same thing holds true for Mickey Mouse and every other work made. Just because it still has value even today does not change that fact. The whole thing is ridiculous.
I can understand how extending the copyright on new works could be considered constitutional -- this is a case where that great document was far too vague, unfortunately -- but retroactively extending them surely is unconstitutional. When you acquire that copyright and publish your work, it is like entering into an irrevocable contract with society that you will release this to the public domain in X years (at least, that is how I see it). There should be no whining about past works that will fall out of protection. Create more works under the new, longer protection if you want, but don't extend all existing works.
Links to opinions (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, two Justices is more than I thought the Eldred side could get. While I sympathize with their intent, it would have been a remarkable abrogation of Congressional power for the Court to have struck down the SBCTEA. "Ill-advised and stupid" does not, unfortunately, mean "unconstitutional."
Re:Relevent quotes from... [Re:Links to opinions] (Score:5, Insightful)
Breyer's argument is the weaker of the two because he gives the most strength to the "promote the progress of science" part of the statute. He argues that even the extension on copyrights for new works fails the constitutional requirements for "limited times" and promotion of the "progress of science." He makes a convincing argument that the courts have an obligation to set limits on what "limited times" means, and then spends a lot of time arguing that life of the author plus 70 years is so long as to fail the "limited times" requirement. He makes a reasonable argument that the courts do have the obligation to set limits (they're the ones who have to strike down a law that extends copyright to life of the author plus 10,000 years,) but fails to fully convince at least me that the current extension is so grossly out of balance that it crosses the line between being merely poorly conceived to being unconstitutional.
To understand Stevens' argument (which is substantially more convincing thand Breyer's) it is necessary to understand the majority opinion. The Ginsburg opinion seems to rely primarily on early patent cases and the existence of previous copyright term extensions by congress to decide that the framers did not intend the reading of the copyright clause that Eldred requests. Their argument primarily rests on three things: the Copyright Act of 1790, which established copyrights in the United States, a number of individual patent extensions passed between 1790 and 1875, and the Copyright Act of 1831, which was the first extension of copyright terms on existing works. From these, as well as continued congressional practice in extending copyrights on existing works, the court concludes that in both the framers' and in the modern legal framework, the CTEA is constitutional.
Stevens argues that the constitution, not early congressional actions must be the basis of our law, and that many of the actions that the majority uses to support retroactive extensions either don't apply or are blatantly unconstitutional. The copyright act of 1790, he argues, does not apply in this case because, while it did give copyright protection to existing works, did so in the context of establishing a national system of copyrights, and the founders were keenly aware of the difference between this establishment of copyrights and the extension of existing ones. Many of the patent extensions used as evidence of the framers intent were blatently unconstitutional extensions of patents on inventions that had already entered the public domain, and so are unconvincing as a basis for modern case law. The copyright extension act of 1831 cannot be used to derive the framers' intent because none of the original delgates were in the 1831 congress. Further, the 1831 act was based on a view of copyright judged unconstitutional in the 1834 case of Wheaton v. Peters. All of this goes to show that the historical precedent for constitutionality of the extension of copyrights is inconclusive at best.
Stevens further points out that protection against ex post facto laws should protect the interests of both the patentee and the public with respect to copyrights. Just as congress should be unable to shorten the term of existing copyrights (thus harming the patentee), they should also be unable to extend the term of existing copyrights (thus harming the public.)
The point of all this is to show that both Stevens and Breyer very much had the constitution in mind when forming their opinions, and they are based on reasonable interpretation of the text. Stevens makes it very clear that he considers congressional practice an inappropriate way of deciding constitutionality and is not uncomfortable with the possibility of this decision putting previous copyright term extensions on similar shaky ground, if they are indeed unconstitutional. Breyer's arguments are less clear on this, and he seems to go out of his way to show how the copyright term extinsions in 1976 could have served a constitutional purpose, while the current statute does not. This interchange makes me wonder whether some of the other justices' opinions were based primarily on a desire not to unravel 170 years worth of copyright term extension acts.
Parent
No, seriously, explain this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, from a Lessig interview:
Opinion of dissenting judges is interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Bryer:
Stevens: Full text can be found on Lawrence Lessig his Blog [stanford.edu].Why I Care (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, copyroghts had to be renewed in order to get the full term. The American people would have really benefitted from the requirement to renew copyrights.
The main advantage this would give us is that people or corporations that really want to protect their IP can protect it, but the stuff that is no longer widely marketable would end up being freed.
In my opinion, this would have given us the best of both worlds: companies or people who can make money off their property are allowed to, while the rest of us would be allowed to mine the rich layers of no longer commercially viable material.
As one poster pointed out already, what happens to the Katzenjammer Kids?
I have always been fascinated by early films and cartoons, for example, and I hate to think that we might lose many of these films because our government will not allow the the type of low-budget or even volunteer effort that would be needed to make this happen!
I think that the preservationists of "Old Time Radio" are a great example of how this would work. Radio plays were not protected by copyright until the 1960s. Because of this, there is a ton of public domain material available from the "Golden Age of Radio" that provides a lot of insight into US culture at that time. Broadcasts from the years of WWII are particularly interesting because the entertainment itself was often part of the war effort. If these works were still protected under copyright, it is likely that no one would be able to profit from them reasonably, and therefore the public probably wouldn't have access.
I'm not worried about Mickey, because Disney will take care of him, at least as long as they can keep squeezing dimes out of him. But there is a lot of stuff out there that should be protected (from decay, that is), and the copyright holders may not care enough (or be financially able) to save them! I think that's the real problem, and we might have been able to fix it if the Supreme Court had ruled differently.
A better solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, how valuable?
For every work of art from the 20's and 30's that is still a major money maker, there are probably a thousand works which have already exhausted their value to the copyright holder. There's not sufficient interest to make it worthwhile to market it. But these works could still be valuable sources for new ideas and inspirations, historical research, and what not.
Is it worth locking up these thousands of works, making republication illegal even as the originals are ravaged by time, just to protect the few works which still provide a revenue stream?
Hell no. But if we have to strike a compromise in order to enrich the public domain and save the vast majority of our cultural heritage, then I propose this:
Repeal the CTEA. In its place, set up a system where the original copyright term applies to every work, but that term can be extended for any given work.
Since I believe in the importance of the public domain, extending the copyright on a work shouldn't be a trivial proposition. Copyright holders should be charged a fee that mirrors its value to the public; say, 1-2% of all profits attributable to the work in question over its lifetime. My reasoning is, if a copyright holder doesn't expect to make even that much from the work over the next twenty years, then revoking the copyright doesn't significantly hurt the copyright holder.
If an all-or-nothing approach ends up getting us nothing, then we have to find some sort of middle ground. This strikes me as a reasonable way to protect the interests of the public. Copyright holders can still hold onto those works they deem valuable, while denying them the ability to sit on works they have no interest in actively maintaining.
Civil Disobediance (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks (Score:5, Informative)
Especially we would like to thank Larry Lessig, the lead attorney, along with Kathleen Sullivan, Jonathan Zittrain, William Fisher, Charles Fried, Charles Nesson, Geoffrey Stewart, Edward Lee, and the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis, Pogue, all of whom worked tirelessly to try this case. We also thank those who contributed to the Eldred Defense Fund to make it possible.
What next? It seems that the decision gives a license to Congress to extend copyright term indefinitely, so there will be an effort within the next 20 years to make another extension. We can oppose that politically. We can also oppose efforts by the media giants to embed DRM in electronic devices, and other such legislation.
Also there will be efforts in other countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and so on, to extend copyright from the present 50 years after author's death, especially for music and movies. We can support efforts to oppose that.
Our case was built on the notion that copyright, as the Framers of the Constitution envisioned it, was a proper foundation for creativity and innovation in the Internet age. Now copyright will be used to lock up works instead. If the only way to access one of these works is to use illegal means, then some will turn to that. Peer-to-peer networks such as Freenet will be the only alternative for many.
The page turns. But the effort was worthwhile. The level of discussion has advanced considerably and citizens are better informed because of this case. Let's hope the next decisions will be better.
People misunderstand the purpose of copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the public doesn't understand exactly what their rights are regarding pre-recorded media, such as DVD movies and music CD's. I suspect a large part of this stems from the fact that most people don't understand why they are given legal protection.
That legal protection stems entirely from a choice made by the Founders to protect creative works from unauthorized use. The constitution says that
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
which led to the development of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Thus, you, as one of The People, are the source of this protection; and the reason you should support that protection is that it promotes the progress of science and useful arts by encouraging innovation.
As a result, there needs to be some balance in the enforcement of copyright. As copyright was intended primarily to increase the size of the public domain---the potential to make profit is merely an incentive to this end---it must be the case that copyright be enforced in a way that does not injure the public for the benefit of a few.
This balance has, over the past century, been tipped in favor of the content producers and owners and against The People little by little. Among the most recent and egregious examples are the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which retroactively increased the term of copyrights to the lifetime of the author plus seventy years, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to bypass technological protections to view content in a way not authorized by the content owner, to provide access to the disabled, or even to access public domain content!
As a result of the slowly changing laws regarding copyright, people have begun to believe that protected works are property in the traditional sense; hence, the appearance of the phrase "intellectual property" to describe copyrighted works. This, I believe, is the most poignant reason why there has been little public outcry against the erosion of the Founders' intended protection of the public interest.
Creative works are not property. A CD (the disc itself), a car, a piece of land, a pair of socks, your toenail clippings---these are property. A band's recording of Smoke on the Water, the musical description of Smoke on the Water---these are creative works and therefore not property. The difference is a very clear and natural one: property consists of tangible things, i.e., those made of matter, which are naturally defensible since the owner would need to be deprived of their use for another to take them, while creative works are those things that have a zero marginal cost of reproduction, i.e., ideas, which are not naturally defensible since someone can take them without in any way reducing the creator's ability to continue using them.
The Founders did not intend for creative works to be "owned" in perpetuity by an individual's family or a corporation; rather, they intended for these works to pass into the public domain after a short period of time (originally 20 years), whereupon they would benefit all of The People. It is arguable (and, in fact, such a case contending so is before the federal courts) that a copyright term of lifetime plus seventy years goes far beyond Congress's constitutional ability to provide protection for creative works for "limited times" in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" by their granting a copyright term that denies the public the benefit of these works for a virtually unlimited period for the sole purpose of enriching well-connected corporate interests, while simultaneously effecting no incentive for the heirs of successful individual creators to do any creating themselves.
The aforementioned corporate interests, as embodied in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), have in turn promoted a mindset that any use not explicitly authorized by the content owners is not only immoral but illegal: this includes ripping CD's you own and encoding them as MP3's to your own hard drive and copying them to your iPod or Rio to listen to while on the subway; viewing DVD's under Linux using an "unauthorized" player; and burning a mix CD for one of your friends. Despite what the RIAA, MPAA, and their ilk might tell you, such activities are clearly "fair use" as defined by the courts, and are protected rights; however, under the DMCA, these acts are likely to be de-facto illegal due to the need for users to bypass technological protections to get at the actual content (although the courts have not yet ruled on these points).
I am not arguing that giving a CD to 250,000 of your "closest friends" on Kazaa is fair use; however, I would argue that the mere act of downloading a couple of songs from the internet (no matter the source) in order to sample them before buying the CD is fair use and therefore protected.
The Congress appears to be split on this issue. While they passed the DMCA in 1998, recent attempts to pass even more restrictive business-model protection acts such as Senator Fritz Hollings' (D-Disney) CBDTPA have been stalled, due in large measure to the opposition of Rick Boucher (D-VA) and the work of groups such as DigitalConsumer and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, all of whom are worthy of your support.
It is time that the balance was tipped back toward The People. Given the nearly unlimited power of our national government and the increasing unlikelihood that the courts and the Congress will begin to again follow the original intent of our constitution, this will take education and effort. You can begin by signalling your support to the groups above and by calling your representatives and telling them that you support fair use instead and oppose government protection of outdated business models. Yet there is no substitute for spreading the word: only when our representatives encounter widespread opposition from the public will the blood money of the content owners pale in comparison to the wrath of the voters.
Andy Grove of Intel best summed up the desires of the media giants when he asked:
Is it the responsibility of the world at large to protect an industry whose business model is facing a strategic challenge? Or is it up to the entertainment industry to adapt to a new technical reality and a new set of consumers who want to take advantage of it?
Trying to keep the KKK bedsheets hidden in cellar (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a fairly tame example [sickopath.com] of Disney's fears. They produced piles upon piles of literature that - while not meant to be degrading at the time - would be a serious embarassment if they were made widely known today.
My grandfather has a few of the Donald Duck comics he used to get at his gas station in 1940s Dayton, Ohio. In these, Donald refers to various and sundry brown people as "porch monkeys" and "cotton pickin tar babies" - let alone the dozens of people of color portrayed in pitiful stereotype. Native Americans, negros, hispanics, etc. etc. all shown as lazy, drunken, slobs or as murderous psychopaths.
The least of Disney's worries is their animated/live action film "Song of the South" - which they have pulled from shelves. This movie actually celebrated the rich culture of blacks in the 19th century south and in treated the subject with respect.
With the works I'm talking about, there was no respect present. Such as that shown in the example - the stereotyped character was put on display as an oddity.
that, I think, is Disney's major motivation for keeping an iron grip on copyright.
Evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine that you live in Plum Creek, a fictitious, medium size town somewhere in the United States. It has two high schools, East High and West High. The rivalry between the two schools' football teams has been a major feature of local culture for decades. Last year, a boy living next door to your home was playing on the West High team. He invited you to attend the season finale, the game against East High. It began with the usual rules; however, East High couldn't seem to move the ball. The team had big, strong players but they were slow, and they had no passing game.
The referees reacted by announcing some rule changes. From now on, a team only needed thirty-nine and one half inches for a first down. And it had five attempts rather than four, but only if it didn't try a pass play. Any forward pass would end a series of downs.
People sitting near you in the stands were quite upset about the changes. They were aware that two of the three referees were uncles, and the third a next door neighbor, of East High players. A committee elected by all the high school coaches in the state had hired the referees. But they had long term contracts, and it was almost impossible to get rid of one who was biased, corrupt, or incompetent.
Many years ago, the coaches committee had also written a rule book, and all the coaches had then voted to adopt it. It stated that no rule could be changed without the written approval of three-fourths of the coaches. It also said, "A first down requires an advance of ten yards or more in no more than four plays." It didn't say anything about special limits on pass plays.
When irate fans complained about the clearly fraudulent rule changes, the referees brushed them off. "You don't understand the rule book," they said, "it's a living document which evolves to meet the needs of changing times. And we have the authority to guide that evolution."
You have just read a rough description of modern U. S. Supreme Court jurisprudence.
(copied from http://ttokarnak.home.att.net/Evolution.html)
Re:EVER?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Assumptively, the Supreme Court said "It's not unconstitutional for such a law to pass, and if you don't like it, go pass a different law." Which is entirely correct, we could always have legislation in the future to reverse this.... but don't hold your copy of Steamboat Willy [bcdb.com] at the duplicator anytime soon.
Parent
Re:EVER?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The point about this judgement is that it creates a firm precedent for extending copyright. Therefore, copyright can be extended again next time it starts to run out. It will always be in the interests of Disney et al to keep their copyrights; therefore, it may well be that no copyright will ever expire again, any more.
This is *one* of the reasons that this judgement is such a setback for the Forces o'Good (tm).
Please do not assume that just because civil rights people are getting riled up, they must automatically be getting riled up about nothing.
The judiciary is certainly the least venial of the three branches of the US government. It is sad to see it going the way of the executive and legislative brances, but there ya go.
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Re:EVER?! (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't. The copyright term for copyrighted works held by private citizens was harmonised by the CTEA. At the same time, the CTEA created a larger disconnect between EU and US copyright law in other areas. Detailed information can be found here [asu.edu]
The "harmonisation" argument was, IMHO, an excuse for increasing the corporate copyright term with 20 years in order to save Mickey.
Parent
Re:Works can still go out of copyright. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Insightful)
Authors and inventors, which I interpret to mean the actual author or inventor, not the great-grandchildren of the author or inventor, or future sharholders in a corporation that descended from the author or inventor or purchased the rights from the author or inventor.
Am I misinterpreting the scope here??
Parent
Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm niether a lawyer or American, but...
I believe that companies in the U.S. (and to varying degrees elsewhere) have most of the rights of human beings. I think there are even people who consider that a 'feature', not a bug in the legal system.
Anyway, for the purposes of copyright, the author can be a company.
Parent
Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the worlds oldest company would be Stora (From Falun, Sweden), which was founded about 1000 years ago, I also believe you'll find very few people that have reached 1000 years.
Point is, Companies/Corporations don't have a limited lifespan, they can live for nearly forever and keep trying to change legislation for a very very long time, that's one reason I think that businesses should not be considered to be individuals/humans/persons.
Parent
Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Interesting)
The Aberdeen Shore Porters Society [shoreporters.com] was founded in 1498 and is still trading - and, indeed, is still in the same business it was in 500 years ago, which says something for consistency. It is reputedly the oldest company in Britain.
There are four companies in the United States [businesshistory.net], even, which date back to before independence.
Absolutely agreed.
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Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Insightful)
Every year more money is spent on elections - and we all know where that money is coming from. I heard a lobbyist on public radio a few days ago say outright that their goal is to either make a representative feel beholden to them or else afraid of them. They didn't even bother to spin it at all or try to make it sound remotely democratic, that is how confident these people are, and why not?
And the supreme irony is that the majority of people seem oblivious to the reality that the partisan divide is one hundred percent in favor of this situation. The electorate in the USA has been divided and conquered. Libertarians are out there fighting for the Republican side, while the Republicans are busy fighting abortion on every available front to satisfy their Christian Right pro-life contingent. Drug law reform advocates back the Democrats, who have been responsible for some of the most draconian, insane, prison-filling mandatory minimum drug laws on the books -all so they could prop up a "tough on crime" image. Above all, everybody studiously ignores the fact that nearly every member of Congress is busy producing two products: payback legislation for their special interest funders and bullshit rhetoric to keep their apparently braindead supporters on the hook. And year after year after year after year the issue of campaign finance legislation gets floated - and then all but the most minimal provisions get shot down, and what's left gets busily sued to smithereens.
And still you can log onto slashdot every day of the week and watch the spectacle of Republicans bickering with Democrats, liberals having it out with conservatives. Well here's the news of the day, sheep: the people who can afford real influence are laughing all the way to the bank. Democracy is an experiment that's failing because an informed, committed, active voting public is not something you can build into a constitution - and without that people get exactly the government they deserve.
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true political power comes from rope, guillotine (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that may be able stop the slide is advancing technology that eventually acts as some sort of deus ex machina.
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Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that copyright is INTENDED TO END in order to put works in the public domain AS SOON AS the public has learned the art (or invention, in the case of patents), and that the artist is intended to monopoly profit ONLY until he has recouped his development costs and a "reasonable" profit.
The problem is that the history is only partly clear on WHICH function of copyright (and patent) is more important. Most private statements on this by English and American statesmen indicate the former, but most legal statements indicate the latter.
The primary point is that both English and American law disdain monopolies of ANY kind, and consider copyright to be intended to be a LIMITED monopoly. Extending copyrights past the life of the artist is NOT limiting the monopoly.
A rigorous economic analysis of this needs to be done to establish that copyright and patents, like ANY coercive intervention in the free market, INEVITABLY affects the economic behavior of people in a negative way.
Until this is done, and the concept of intellectual property is proven to be fraudulent, we MUST LOSE this fight. You CANNOT win, as Lessig tries, by supporting the notion of copyright but trying to limit it. You're fighting with one hand tied behind your back...
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Re:No, not "ever", just 20 years (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was the handling of the extension. The extension is retroactive. That is the part that they ruled constitutional.
The upside to the media companies is that in another 20 years, they can lobby for another 20 year extension and it too will be constitutional. And then repeat that forever.
It means that the media companies don't have to give anything back to the public, if they lobby well enough. The Constitution says that congress can define how long the terms of copyrights are for. This basically means that they can make it a ludicrous amount of time.
Parent
Re:Replying before all the info is in (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah...there are some problems with it, but at least that would keep the works available one way or another. At least it would help seed ebay, used stores, or whatever...you'd be more likely to find something released in the last 10 years than 20+ ago.
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Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Interesting)
No they don't. Or at least not in the case of intellectual property. If we are talking a physical item, then yes, ownership makes sense. But the fact is that all works are derivative works, derived from the input that society gives the artist. All of society help an author write a book, a painter paint a painting, a musican write a song.
We give them a short term monopoly on their work as a repayment for coming up with it, but then it should get turned over to the society that helped make it happen.
That is the reason for the public domain, and to me, it's a damn good one. This decision really pisses me off.
Parent
Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Insightful)
J.R.R. Tolkien's family doesn't have the right to own copyright on the Lord of the Ring's. Why? Why should his work become public domain? What gives you the right to it?
Because it's a derivative work. I'm not just trolling. Consider all the fairy tales and kid stories that went into the Lord of the Rings, eh? Many elements derive from previous stories.
Take Gandalf, for example. He's a shootin' image of Moses, if you ask me. Leading his people around with a big staff in front of him, performing miracles.
Frodo being chosen to carry the ring? Come on! The only things Tolkien did to the whole mess was to string the elements together (basic engineering) and add characterization (albeit 2-dimensional).
Face it, this work of Fantasy which is considered the Sun Source of All Fantasy is a derivative work that derives from many of the fairy tales we learn while we're growing up. Why should Tolkien be attributed ownership of such a collection of Fairy Tales?
This is like the GNU/Linux argument. Why should Linus be given sole credit to a work when all he added was the kernel?
Furthermore, if Tolkien was given a monopoly over the stories he wrote, and he was able to prevent further derivative works, he wouldn't be the father of fantasy, because Fantasy as a genre would have been squelched!
Same goes for science fiction. If Jules Vernes hadn't been able to string together elements from stories he may or may not have read (from Edgar Allen Poe, possibly, or others), would science fiction have become the genre it is today?
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Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure he does. But his family isn't him.
What gives his family the right to it? They didn't write it. He earned money with the books, and passed that on to them, and they have every right to it. That's where "right" stops. After that they're just guileless beneficiaries of a system designed to enrich corporations, not families of authors. They can write their own books if they want.
If I own a store, I can pass the physical assets on to my family, but when I die, they have to come up with the intangibles (goodwill, friendly chat with customers, ongoing interaction with the broader public) on their own.
If I'm on a basketball team, and I die, my family doesn't get "rights" to my starting center position. They just inherit my money.
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Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm... that's obviously true for something like a wagon or a bale of hay, but let's see if that statement applies to IP:
Nope. The institution of IP was explicitly predicated on the progress of science and useful arts. Securing rights to IP is specified as a means to that end, not an end in itself.
IOW, IP exists because society as a whole has a right to useful arts and sciences, not because authors and inventors have some god given right to claim ownership of swaths of information space. The ownership of IP is an accident of implementation, not an entitlement for you or your family.
This nation is full of simmering frogs who have fallen for the last century of creeping featurism in the concept of IP.
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Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's even worse because Disney got to steal from the cultural works of their fathers and grandfathers, but if you decide to do something based on "the little mermaid', there is a chance you could get sued. Or what if your grandkid decides to do some derivative work off 'Lilo and stitch'? He could get sued. Now that's just plain wrong...aka "we can do it, but you can't".
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*Sigh* Read between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
The quotation you used was taken out of context. Stories like the aforementioned two were written long before Walt Disney was a struggling Hollywood cartoonist. His point was that Disney "interpreted" stories written long ago and made millions, but if someone 80 years from now were to write a movie derived from a Disney original, then they would be sued. There is irony inherent in that idea, as you can see.
You are right about Mickey Mouse being an original idea, but HE WASN'T TALKING ABOUT MICKEY MOUSE.
Case study:
Did you see Treasure Planet [imdb.com]? Yeah, me neither, I heard it was horrible. But either way, Treasure Island was a book written by Robert Louis Stevenson [kirjasto.sci.fi] in 1883. 114 years from now, if my great-great grandchild wanted to write The Lion King in space (the only discernable difference between Treasure Island and Treasure Planet), Disney would NEVER give them the right to make it, and would sue the pants off them if they tried.
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Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Little Mermaid" was written by Hans Christian Andersen. Disney took the story, mangled it a bit, didn't credit the original author, and now protects it like a rabid bulldog. Same with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Written by Victor Hugo. He's not credited either. "Pocahontas" was a (more or less) true story. "Mulan" is based on a Chinese legend. "Atlantis" is an adaptation of "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" (and draws many compelling comparisons to "Nadia: Secret of Blue Water"). "The Lion King" was a direct ripoff of "Kimba, The White Lion", an original work done by Osamu Tezuka. "Cinderella", "Snow White", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Sleeping Beauty" are all widely known faerie tales.
Disney most certainly got to "steal from the cultural works of their fathers and grandfathers".
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But not "Happy Birthday" (Score:5, Insightful)
All current works are derivitive of other works. You should read Lawrence Lessig's latest book on this topic. He's the lawyer who argued this case for Eldred in front of the Supreme Court. All musicians are at least slightly influenced by music they've heard throughout their life. How else could there be generations of bands of a genre? Or bands who all play similar music? It's because everything is based on what came before. If Jimi Hendrix didn't allow Eric Clapton to learn and adapt from his songs we'd be without a great set of songs to listen to. He didn't copy Jimi, but if just one part of one solo has the same 3 notes, he could be guilty of copyright infringement. Do you see where all of this is leading and why the framers of the constitution left it open to interpretation, so long as the duration is limited?
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The Crow and the Owl (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure Louise Szente won't mind
THE CROW AND THE OWL
Louise Szente
The glow of the fire against the night sky was comforting. A smell of roasting meat permeated the air. The family sat quietly watching the fire and listening to the night sounds.
A morose old man sat to one side poking the fire with a twig. His thoughts were lost in yesteryear when such an occasion would have been noisy and full of laughter. Stories would have been told and lessons would have been learnt. But, now... now they cannot tell stories anymore. Now tradition is lost.
"Tata" said one of the children "please tell us about the times when you were young."
"Oh my boy" lamented the old man "those days are gone, I am not allowed to tell the tales that I heard from my grandfather, but I have been thinking. I can tell you the story about the Owl and the Crow, because I have just made it up. Listen and listen well."
Once a long long time ago, the Owl was the custodian of all the stories of the land. Every night all the animals would gather around the Owl and listen to the stories. And oh, what wonderful stories the Owl told. He passed on all the knowledge of the world.
Every night the Crow sat with all the other animals listening to the Owl. But, Crow grew jealous. "Why should Owl have the right to tell the stories, I am sure I can do a better job and makes lots of money."
Crow spent his days thinking of a way to take away the right of the Owl to tell the stories. He craved the power to have all the animals listen to him. He thought and thought because he knew that he could get very rich if he had the right to all the knowledge of the land.
One day Crow went to the Owl and very politely asked Owl if he could write down the stories that the Owl told each night. "Just think" said Crow "if I write down the stories, the children can read it during the day and never forget the lessons all the stories teach. The animals could use the stories to gather plants for healing purposes. Why they could even learn how to live peacefully together.:
The Owl spent days pondering Crows' request. He admired the cleverness of Crow. To think that the children would be able to learn during the day as well, maybe then he would be able to appoint a successor much sooner than tradition dictates. This made the Owl very happy, because it always took a long time to train somebody to take over the position of Custodian of Tradition.
Every day Crow would go to the Owl and in a smooth voice tell Owl of all the benefits the land could reap by having its tradition in writing. The purpose of all the medicinal plants would forever be available. The way children should be brought up traditionally would forever be there for parents to follow. Why, it would make the land a better place to live in because all the knowledge of the land would be saved for prosperity.
As Owl sat and listened to Crow each day, he wondered at the plan of Crow. He never for one moment thought about what Crow would benefit by such an idea. Oh, he knew very well that Crow was a sly and devious creature, but he thought Crow had changed. Perhaps Crow was getting old and was afraid that he would be forgotten. Be that as it may, the Owl thought about the idea and eventually said to Crow that he may write down all the stories.
This made Crow very happy. He rushed off and prepared a document for the Owl to sign. "Why should I sign this document?" asked the Owl.
Crow went into a long explanation about how some of the animals to not trust him and if he had this document, he could proved that he had the Owl's permission to record all the stories. Pleased with the foresight of Crow Owls signed the document that he did not really understand. He knew the animals did not trust Crow and he knew that they would query the fact that Crow is recording all the traditions of the land.
For years Crow sat at the feet of the Owl every night recording the stories. During the day Crow would ask the Owl how many stories he still has to tell and Owl would reply that there are many stories to be told and many lessons to be learnt.
One night a new generation of animals gathered to listen to the stories of the Owl. It so happened that the Owl decided to repeat a story. Immediately Crow jumped up and stopped Owl.
"You are not allowed to repeat that story," said Crow, "that story belongs to me"
"No Crow, you are wrong, that story belongs to all the animals of the land. It is my duty to tell this story. All the animals need to know everything about the land," replied the Owl.
"That story belongs to me," replied Crow " you gave me the right to that story, so you have to ask my permission to repeat that story. Come to think of it, I think that all the stories have been told. Now, all the stories are mine. If you want to tell the stories you will have to pay me"
"But,,, But what is this" stuttered the Owl "since the beginning of time the stories of the land have been told to the children every night. We always sat around the fire and the Custodian of Knowledge would tell stories. That is how the children learnt!"
"Not anymore." replied the Crow "from now on there will be no stories at night anymore. If you want to continue with the stories you will have to pay me. And, I am going to charge entrance fee from each and every animal attending the story time. Nothing comes free in this life Owl."
"What is this?" cried all the animals.
With an evil grin on his face Crow replied:
"THIS IS CALLED COPYRIGHT"
"You see children," said the old man "that is why I cannot tell you the stories of the times past. All the stories have been told. I can only tell you new stories that I had just made up and then I must be very careful that the Crow does not hear me, otherwise he would take my stories, sell it, and nobody would benefit from it. If the Owl had not given away our tradition to the unscrupulous crow, night times would have been the happy times it was.
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Re:Owl and Crow? Violation! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Might Spur innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it probably wasn't an original idea with him, either :P
Ecclesiastes, circa 950BC(?):
1:10 Is there a thing of which it may be said, "Behold, this is new?" It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us.
There's nothing new under the sun.
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This is GOOD news for content creators...sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
But wait... Suppose I don't write mega-super-uber blockbuster bestsellers, and my work (like 99% of all authors' work) remains steadily mid-list after I die. Judging by current trends, ever-lengthening copyrights mean only one thing: I languish in obscurity forever...and ever...and ever...and nobody gets rich...
(We are so many, but they are so rich.)
Hmm...immortality for the priveledged few; death and obscurity for the rest. Maybe not such good news after all.
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Destroying the diversity of works... (Score:5, Insightful)
The result of this is that in the future, we will find that the historical media we have available to us will be only those things that have ongoing popularity enough to warrant their continual republication. Think about this, in 90 years, you'll still be able to buy the Beatles greatest hits, but you won't be able to buy MC Hammer's greatest hits. You might think, "well who'd want to buy that anyhow", but it's a part of our culture that will forever be lost. Nobody will be able to go back and say, "what the hell were they thinking?" because for all intents and purposes it will have never existed.
Now, granted, forgetting that MC Hammer ever existed might not be the greatest tragedy to face our culture. But think about how many books are being written about 9/11 and the coming Gulf War II (the Wrath of Bush). How many of those will be preserved for history? Historians will go back and only get a limited perspective on events and judge them differently because of that limitation. This is the process that allows the victor to write the history.
Maybe what we need to do with copyright is alter how it works slightly. Instead of it being a fixed term for all works, what about varying the term based on how recently it was actively published. So, if you publish a book and don't run new printings for 20 years, the book goes into the public domain. This way, over time the most popular and high grossing copyrighted material would be preserved for it's money making ability. The lower popularity material would be preserved through the free ability to copy amongst those with an interest in it.
The risk here isn't that we'll never get to make free copies of Mickey, but rather that a vast collection of works will simply cease to exist from publishing neglect. This extension of copyright insures that a greater volume of work will disintegrate from neglect before it can be perserved in the free copying environment of the public domain.
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Re:The first thing this makes *me* think is... (Score:5, Insightful)
How hypocritical can you get?
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Re:The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding, eh? I know this decision has made *MY* respect for copyrights, our entire judicial system, and the government in general, go way up. Golly. Better "plug that analog hole", aka our eyes, by chipping our brains right away, Fritz, 'cuz my opinion of your "rights" just hit bottom. Time to start violating copyrights to material I don't even *want*, just for the sake of civil disobedience.
As an independent artist I can tell you that copyrights are the only thing that can protect us from people taking advantage of our work.
And as a recent article about the dojinshi phenomena in Japan shows, that doesn't quite hold true.
However, I *do* respect you, and thank you for producing works that I (or others, if not me) might enjoy. Seriously, no sarcasm intended.
However...
Those copyrights don't *NEED* to protect you after you die. Current copyright terms *will* last longer than any of us will, unless science "cures" death in the next few years. The idea of "to the author's death plus 70 years" seems quite adequate to me.
As for your "legacy"... Face it - If your work doesn't make you wealthy in this life, it won't do so in the next. At most, someday your kids might make a few bucks selling the distillation of your life for some company to use in a commercial. Yay, the thought makes *me* want to go out and create.
I think a lot of people have missed the big *philosophical* issue involved here. Corporate America has us so brainwashed to believe in their "rights" that we don't even realize the true nature of such rights. Many of us think it MORALLY wrong to "steal" 80-year-old copyrighted material. Yet, the US constitution *only* allows copyrights "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
For THAT reason, all Americans should feel outrage at this decision. The supreme court has sold us out. Unlimited extensions ala the Sunny Bono act do not equal "limited" copyright terms as allowed in the constitution.
I'll skip getting into the obvious rant about erosion of fair-use rights as well.
Well, at least you Europeans don't need to worry about your artistic heritage vanishing into the past because something ceased to exist (think nitrate film) because it became unprofitable before its copyright expired. Perhaps when (if) the US gets some sanity back, you'll lend us a copy so we can enjoy the past as well?
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Re:I hate to make this a party-line issue, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not too surprised at the result - Chief Justice Rehnquist's comment during the hearing was essentially "So you want to be able to rip off other people's work?" With that kind of high-level misunderstanding of what copyright law is really supposed to do, it's unlikely that things will be changing through the courts anytime soon. Frankly, even getting a Supreme Court hearing on the case was a surprising victory.
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MPAA Said Extension Wouldn't Bring Much $ (Score:5, Informative)
The MPAA didn't seem to think so when the extension was being enacted. Fritz Attaway, Senior Vice President, Government Relations and Washington General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association of America, testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, back when the extension was considered in 1997 that:
"First and foremost, term extension will not provide a huge windfall to anyone -- certainly not for the motion picture industry. We do not project a significant revenue increase for movies during the proposed extended term until the year 2020. For us in the movie industry, the importance of US leadership in copyright protection within the community of nations is far more important than short term revenue impact.
Second, term extension will not adversely affect the users of copyrighted material. In most cases the very opposite will be true. This is because copyrights give owners not only the incentive to create works, they provide continuing incentive to distribute them.
Absent copyright, movies, books, songs, etc. have no value. They are free for the taking. Thus, there is no incentive to maintain their quality -- particularly important for films -- or to aggressively market them. What is the sense of promoting the availability of a work if anyone else can capitalize on your promotional efforts?
When asked about the possibility of future extensions, Mr. Attaway said:
It could be that in 2020, circumstances would suggest that an additional term be provided.
Source: Hearings [house.gov]
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Re:The USA has followed its own laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is proposing to take away all property rights or other rights of corporations. This is just about copyright extensions. If Disney will go broke because they loose their very oldest of the old copyrights, then they should go broke as this demonstrates a tremendous proverty of creativity there.
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