Disney Wins, Eldred (and everyone else) Loses 1292
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.
Suprise!? (Score:0, Insightful)
The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:2, Insightful)
...'stealing' from those bastards is not a crime.
Might Spur innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
sing your own songs
The last chance... (Score:3, Insightful)
But if enough people break the copyright, will the other courts of the land (not to mention the law enforcement agencies) really apply the law? That seems doubtful. Any thoughts on that?
Score another win for Corporate America.
What has happened to the USA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't they... (Score:2, Insightful)
Other nations (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to make this a party-line issue, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Chump Change (Score:2, Insightful)
Oooh, wow. The horror of a billion dollar company "losing" money that they had no right to continue making anyway.
Well, atleast with the hundreds of millions of dollars (chump change for them) they secured in this continued revenue can continue to fund the legislation they want to buy in the future.
They should just get it over with and build a McDonald's drive thru at the Senate Hill, with a little sign listing prices on the McCorrupt Bill with Fries, and a Jr. Congressman squaking out, "Can I take your order?"
Have protect those exports! (Score:3, Insightful)
And now for international news (Score:3, Insightful)
The upshot of this is that no work produced in the United States since the 1920s will ever pass out of Copyright ... in the United States. Many of these movies, books and songs are already in the public domain in other nations, even those who are party to the Berne Convention (which mandates a minimum term of 50 years for most works).
Well, this is pretty frustraiting.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see why Leasing is so pessimistic...
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.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously People. Companies are an absolutely enormous part of what makes the U.S. possible.
And, people have a right to own what they produced, and keep it in the family if they wish. If it's worth enough, someone will buy it. If it's not, then it will stay owned and worthless to anyone except for sentimental reasons.
Disney (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EVER?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Although, to be honest, even if we did create anything, we'd be RIAA/MPAA/etc whores, and the copyright wouldn't belong to us anyway.
Re:No, not "ever", just 20 years (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, the Court basically just said "Hey, you're free to grant eternal copyright as long as you do it 20 years at a time." This has been their position in the past, but they reiterated it here. And as long as copyrights generate money, the people receiving that money will lobby for and receive extensions. Hence, these works will never enter the public domain.
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.
Re:That sucks, but if that's the world we live in. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Might Spur innovation (Score:1, Insightful)
Disney Sucks.
Sigh.. is it just me..? (Score:2, Insightful)
Last weekend my fiancee and I were randomly surfing the web after an evening of playing 'Hunter' on our GC (the couple that kills zombies together stays together, we say!), and we ran across the John's Switch to Canada [cjb.net] parody of the Apple Switch ads. 2 years ago, it would have been good for a laugh and nothing more. But last weekend, after having ourselves a good laugh, we both found ourselves going "Hmmm... Canada...". I think this is the first time I've ever seriously considered living somewhere, anywhere else than the USA.. and it was even more surprising to me to see my girlfriend, who is not nearly as politcally active/concerned as I've become lately, giving the whole idea of leaving the country some serious consideration as well.
My slightly OT point here is, the more rights that are taken away from us, the less freedom we are given, the more control that is handed over to corporation after corporation.. the harder it gets to love this country. This is just another nail in the coffin. The USA has long stopped being the 'Land of the Free'.
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??
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.
Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:1, Insightful)
Right now, individuals are not a big deal, but when the RIAA, MPAA, etc make it so that the individuals are effected, by enforcing the laws that give jail time and/or fines to the infringers, then they will change. Why? Because everyone engages in copyright infringement, and some enterprising politition will run on that platform. At that point, Congress will listen.
Well, one can hope.
Disney is a bunch of hypocrites (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, look at "The Lion King", a blatant ripoff of Osamu Tezuka's "Kimba the White Lion" [kimbawlion.com]. Or "Aladdin", which copies heavily from "The Thief of Bagdad". Hell, 99% of their crap is based entirely around public domain works. But they don't want anything they produce to ever be public domain? Give me a break.
Favorite Quote from the article (Score:2, Insightful)
That sums up American politics pretty well.
Death of culture. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, not "ever", just 20 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EVER?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, question for all the legal types out there...
Does this decision fall on the side of the "literal" or "intent of the framers" interpretation of the constitution? My reading is that its "intent" - the Supreme Court has effectively said that the "intent" of the framers is irrelevant, and that the US Government is bound only by the letter of the law. Though this has frightening implications for any "temporary" measures the Constitution might permit - as long as they're "limited" at a particular time, they're ok... Even if they're retroactively and continually extended ad infinitum.
Re:No, not "ever", just 20 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. And do you actually believe that within the next 20 years, they won't pass yet another extension? If you think that, you're ignoring volumes of history [cni.org] (link courtesy of Jason Scott [slashdot.org]).
The point is that as long as these corporations have copyrights that are valuable to them, additional extensions will be purchased from Congress (barring a drastic shift in the temperment of Congress). So the story is correct, we will never get these copyrights into the public domain.
Any words from content creators? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like the hear the opinions of those out there who create copyrighted content, and prefereably those who generate some revenue from this content. I say generate revenue because it's not to difficult to see how someone who creates works but them puts them pd might have a negative opinion. Instead, does anyone who actually makes a living (or some part of one) from creating copyrighted content think that this is a GOOD thing?
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?
Kind of like patenting rice (Score:3, Insightful)
Say I live in a town / country where we have a traditional story. Kids do it as a theatre show in school, local radio companies put it on the radio, usual small town stuff. DisneyCorps comes along and realises it's a great story, makes a film out of it. Next year all the local schools are threatened with multimillion law suits if the local 7 year olds try to tell their little traditional story for their mums and dads at the end of year show....
...All Your Culture Belongs To Us...
I guess if multinational food companies can tell local farmers that their multicorp now owns the rights to the crops the locals have been farming for thousands of years, the same could happen about cultural heritage?
Re:EVER?! (Score:2, Insightful)
What's disturbing to me is the way a decision made by a US court about a bill passed by a US congress affects me directly even though I don't live anywhere near the US. That's not fair.
Daniel
Re:Not even an iissue... (Score:4, Insightful)
I keyed in in on this sentence as well, since at best, it's misleading. The expiration of copyrights wouldn't have "cost" Disney anything. In fact, it will cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars, because now they have to continue paying for permission to view, read, and listen to Disney material. Think anyone will be enlightened enough to boycott Disney (much the way I've boycotted the RIAA - three years or so and counting)?
re: Why Expire? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is true. But they are now have the rights of a person which was never the intention. Corporations were supposed to exist by the pleasure of the people. Their charters were supposed to be revokable. Now they seem to be above the law. They have the same rights as you or me, but at the same time they are not subject to the law the same way you and I are.
An extreme example is murder. If I knowingly or unknowingly create conditions that lead to someone's death, I will be convicted for murder or manslaughter. Yet people die directly from products created by corporations and what happens to them? Usually nothing, maybe the consumers will sue them, but the government never levies a punishment equal to jail time.
Re:EVER?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's just be thankful we do have some form of checks and balances.
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.
Re:EVER?! (Score:3, Insightful)
(Caps intentially scewed.)
Lets face it, this really is a country "Of the people, for the people, and by the people."*
* People refers to the top 1% which own %50 of the wealth, corporate trusts, and lawyers.
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...
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.
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.
(earnings == 0) != (costs 0) (Score:3, Insightful)
Also at risk of expiration was protection for the version of Mickey Mouse portrayed in Disney's earliest films, such as 1928's "Steamboat Willie."
Congress passed the copyright law after heavy lobbying from companies with lucrative copyrights.
Hey, they just could not make that much money out of these so it would not cost them a lot.
BTW, as they retain the original tapes, they'd be the only ones who could be re-publishing these on DVD, no ?
And if not, I see 3 possibilities for them if this copyright were cancelled
Re:Clarence Thomas book deal reached with HarperCo (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
The answer to this is an unfortunate "yes" (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the DMCA fiasco. It has already caused consumers much grief, and it ain't going to go away.
In fact it's probably going to get a lot worse, when similar laws will be put forward in various EU countries :(
NOW will you turn off that TV?!!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
I steal music and continue to do so to recover the money that the RIAA membership STOLE from me. Do you do any form of disobediance in your life?
Until you stop going to the 5th regurgitation of "Dude Where's my Car?", and the umpteenth Rocky movie, the crap will continue. Consumers have the power, but are such ignorant sheep, that the popular opinion is controlled by the media propoganda of the day. Do 56% of this country really think Shrubya is doing a good job? I don't believe it for a minute.
Are you tired of having the news portray "Joe Millionaire" as more important than the story of a abused child, or failed dipolmacy by our government?
"Television, the drug of a Nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation." -Disposible Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
Re:Probably "correct" legally (Score:3, Insightful)
So, in comp-sci-speak, (effectively) the length of a copyright is finite but unbounded.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:2, Insightful)
And what makes you think that only corporations hold copyrights and intellectual property?
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. Sure I barely make any money from my work so I'm not about to quit my day-job. I don't mind giving away my work for free but I sure as hell don't want anybody profiting from something *I* did.
The only thing I agree about is that organizations like RIAA only look after the well-being of corporations and not artists! It irks me everytime I hear one of those bozos say that they are looking after us.
Re:The first thing this makes *me* think is... (Score:5, Insightful)
How hypocritical can you get?
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?
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.
Opinion of dissenting judges is interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Bryer:
Stevens: Full text can be found on Lawrence Lessig his Blog [stanford.edu].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.
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.
Of the people? No. Of the Multi-national corps. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you can add The White House, and pretty much every other aspect of governement to this list.
I've been arguing for years that the government has failed to represent the public interest, or the interests of the people who are supposed give it power.
We must realize that this government doesn't work for us, but actively against us, and throw them all out.
Re:Any words from content creators? (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope to be able to make money from my works for a time, but expect--no, INSIST--that they become public domain at some point. That's the way it has always been. If copyright law could be extended indefinitely, what would become of any famous work consisting of variations on another composer's theme (Brahms' Haydn Variations, Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations, etc.)? What about now? Can I safely write a set of variations on a theme by, say, John Williams? Or John Adams, Michael Dougherty, Aaron Copland? I would like to think that any young composer would feel free to write variations on something of mine in 20 years, but of course, I could sue the staff paper out of her.
The corporate idea of what intellectual property law should be doesn't make any sense from a historical perspective. It makes sense from the perspective of having made a successful work once and not wanting to have to pay someone to do another. The way Disney wants it, I should be able to write one successful work, and then live off the royalties for the rest of my life, and have my children and grandchildren do the same. What's the motivation to put all the sweat and anxiety into new works, then?
Of course, it was a media corporation that screwed Rachmaninoff on his most popular work, the Prelude in C# minor, for which he never received even one royalty payment. If artists could trust corporations, the corporate claims about protecting us might not sound so hollow and sinister.
Re:The first thing this makes *me* think is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because this was the intention of the framers of the Constitution?
Let's flip this around : how come Disney can make works such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Tarzan, Pinocchio and others, all based on other people's work, without paying the creators of those characters? Answer : because they waited until the copyrights ended (or the works were created before copyright existed, in some cases).
A large portion of Disney's animated output never would have existed had copyrights been as lengthy as they are now. The fact that they can make these works helps them and us, because we can enjoy the movies (and they can make money off of them).
Another example : Shakespeare. How many movies are either direct versions of Shakespeare, or thinly-veiled interpretations? Recent teen films such as "Ten Things I Hate About You" and "O" are based on the bard, for example. "Clueless" was based on a Jane Eyre book, if I recall.
There are MANY works we could not enjoy today if the originals they were based on) were protected by copyright. Also, certain books would probably not even be in print had the copyrights not expired.
Overall, I think the ability to _eventually_ create derivative works is a boon to society. Sure, the creator should be able to have a long period of exclusivity, but eventually things should go back in the public domain - as was the intention of the copyright law in the first place.
The USA has followed its own laws (Score:4, Insightful)
What, are Corporations not allowed any rights, because public opinion says they're evil?
Executive #1: Sir, Congress and the President just passed a law stripping every right corporations had. We no longer own any properties, patents, and copyrights that we used to own.
Executive #2: Well, so how do we make a profit now?
Executive #1: We can't sir, we charged money for our products. Now they're free.
Executive #2: Well, lets close down the corporation then. Inform the employees that they no longer have a job.
10,000 employees: What? We're getting laid off? Stupid system....
In this Disney case, the judicial branch said a particular law applies in Disney's favor. Its not because the Supreme Court is biased towards corporations. To claim that one Supreme Court decision means the entire US government panders to big business is ignorant and ridiculous.
Re:Why does everything have to be free?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Physical property and intellectual property are hardly the same thing. However, if, in 2043, you want my 1993 Ford Escort, I guess I won't object too strenuously, given that I will be in the market for something more recent.
" If you want to create something, create something original. Don't depend on the work somebody else did decades ago to be your only creative outlet. It's still legal to get inspiration from other works. And until they take that right away from us, use it. There are still original ideas being created every day."
You mean, for example, that Disney shouldn't have depended on works like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Snow White" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"; work somebody else did decades ago.
Re:That sucks, but if that's the world we live in. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and why can't they copyright them? Because they are in the public demain. Disney is happy to exploit other people's works that have become public domain, but doesn't want any of it's works to ever enter the public domain. That isn't fair.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:3, Insightful)
JRR Tolkien died in 1973, having written what is regarded to be many to be one of the greatest works ever written, published in 1948.
Both these dates are before I was born.
Are you arguing that it is beneficial to the general public to grant full and exclusive control to his family until 2068, or probably sometime after my death unless I am
especially lucky.
In summary, despite being one of the great works, completed a before I [or my parents] were born is unlikely to enter the public domain until the my own grand children's time - providing there is no copyright law extension passed in the next 60 years.
However, to respond to the final comment in your post, without copyright law, JRR Tolkiens family would not have the right to prevent my duplicating his work. Please explain why JRR Tolkiens *great grandchildren* preventing *my grandchildren* from duplicating the work will benefit the public domain and promote progress in the Arts and Sciences.
In particular, note that due to the money received from sales on The Lord of the Rings he would have essentially no incentive to publish the other Tolkien works since he is guaranteed an income for life from the earlier work.
Re:But not "Happy Birthday" (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, the song is credited to two sisters. You are right though, it is still copyrighted and will be until at least 2030. The song itself brings in around $2 million annually, to a division of AOL Time Warner.
More info here. [snopes.com]
Re:Why don't they... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's Not Forever... or is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
The court's analysis goes something like this:
The Constitution provides for limited copyright and patent terms.
A term that prescribes a specific number of years (like life + 70) is a limited term.
Congress has repeatedly extended both copyright and patent terms in the past.
An extended term that is still discreetly defined is still a limited term.
Congress can extend terms all it wants, so long as there remains, at least on paper, a definite cutoff point.
The flaw isn't with the Court's logic, but with the Constitution itself. The framers never contemplated that the patent and copyright system would ever get used the way it has been. Legally, the court's decision is perfectly accurate.
As a matter of policy, it means that copyright terms last as long as large corporations can pay for them to be extended.
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.
Re:Might Spur innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
sing your own songs
While the call of "be original" is on the surface appealing it ignores reality. In reality rare is the idea that isn't inspired by others or their works. Mark Twain even went so far as to say that there isn't such a thing as an original idea anymore although I don't think I'd go that far.
If current copyright laws were in existence during the Rennaisance and earlier our culture would be far poorer indeed. You might as well erase the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Beowulf, Chaucer and just about any mythology you've ever heard of as no one would be able to tell these tales before groups (let alone modify them) w/o violating copyright laws. During the time of these authors substantial "borrowing" (today we would call them plagarists) was an accepted practice. People would hear a tale (or part of one) and "improve" on it to suit their needs and incorporate it into their own work. Having a large creative commons only helps artists to create ever greater arts of works. Its only been in the past 100 years that we've developed a very strong sense of copyright entitlements/rights.
Today, if someone comes along and modifies a story that you've written they're called a theif. When Shakespeare does this same thing he's (rightly) hailed as a genius. Does anyone else see a dichotomy here? I'm not saying that we shouldn't have copyright laws but certainly Disney and many other huge multinationals have restricted the creative commons available to a pittance of what it could be. Disney (and the Supreme Court) hurts artists and consumers of art everywhere for the with this ruling. I think Walt would (or at least should) be ashamed were he alive today considering that a good chunk of Disney's stories and songs are based on works in the public domain.
The Case Was Lost When... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lessig tried to make the case that the 1790 Act replaced an existing State Copyright scheme with a Federal one, but that argument was not accepted by the majority.
<sigh>
The beginning of the end. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So, what do we do? (Score:2, Insightful)
Congress has made a mess. Congress needs to clean it up.
Not if you mean ignoring copyright law, it isn't. It's not your job to clean-up the mess Congress has made: it's your job to hold their feet to the fire until they've cleaned it up themselves. Otherwise they'll never understand the mess they've made, and never learn how to avoid making a similar mess in the future.
(Sometimes evem I'm surprised how much being a parent has taught me...)
Re:Active Use Copyrights? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly the wrong thinking that got us to the place we are now. The popular opinion that the orginator of a creative work owns it, and has exclusive rights to get compensated for its worth until they no longer can think of any way to suck any more money from it is what allows the Supreme Court to make a ruling that is so obviosly counter the wording of the constitution.
The expectation that an orginator of creative work will recieve compensation from having the exclusive rights to their works for a limited time certainly motivates the creator of the work. I don't see how still owning those rights long after their death provides much additional motivation.
Contitutionaly, copyright law exsists for the sole purpose of benefiting the public, the fact that the creator of the work also benefits is just a happy coincidence.
*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.
Re:Suprise!? (Score:3, Insightful)
The court looked at patents and decided that what applies to patents also applies to copyrights.
I just love the can of worms this opened up.
Basically if it is OK to extend the copyright terms forever by doing so 10 or 20 years at a time, it is OK to do the same with patents.
What I expect now is the non-entertainment industries to start lobbying congress for longer patent terms. It's been 20 years long enough. I expect the pharmaceutical companies would be first in line to grease the palms of Congress.
Re:The USA has followed its own laws (Score:4, Insightful)
If we tossed out coropate personhood, they'd be run just like unincorporated business are--as a partnership among their stockholders.
Worked fine for hundreds of years, no reason we can't (not "shouldn't", "can't") go back to it.
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.
Copyright extension licenses (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, this is detrimental to the amount of material entering the public domain, especially when you consider quite how much material that encompasses.
Yet, the grasp of copyright is only being increased to protect certain, individual pieces of material from ever entering the public domain.
Which is really short-sighted, as I'm sure most people would agree.
If you applied a system such that all pieces of work fall into the public domain after say, 50 years, but the copyright owner is granted the ability to extend the copyright license based on a scheme of graduated taxation (or some other significant fee, for example) for a period of time on an individual property then, in my opinion, a better system emerges.
In the case of "The Mouse", Disney Corporation would pay a fee that guarantees protection beyond the standard copyright terms, but other, less high-profile (and uneconomic) works get released into the wild. As time goes on, it may become uneconomical to continue to extend the license, and so that property would enter the public domain.
I realise that in an ideal world, copyrights would expire and that would be that. But this isn't the world we live in. Any taxation raised in doing this could be fed back into restoring/preserving original work that has expired. As well as buying bombs and votes and suchlike, but I digress.
It's a compromise and a kludge, but it might just work?
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.
Not the end - if we don't let it be the end (Score:4, Insightful)
So, we try again.
And again.
And again.
Until we win.
People for keeping copyright sane can change tactics, get more funding, find new arguments, wait for justices to change, etc. They can adapt.
Disney can't change the fact that it's basically trying to extent copyright indefinitely. They can't adapt.
So, time to gear up for the next fight.
Re:Any words from content creators? (Score:4, Insightful)
I work for a nonprofit [eff.org], so my science fiction writing income actually accounts for a substantial chunk of my living.
I have never written an "original" word in my life. Every idea I've had has been inspired by those who came before me. I just released my first novel [craphound.com], both as a hardcover book [tor.com] and an ebook under the terms of a Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] license. The novel is set in Walt Disney World, and revolves around the efforts of preservationists in a transhuman future who strive to keep the rides true to the original Imagineers' intent.
I take a lot of flak for my genuine admiration for the Disney Parks and films -- people want to know why I've thrown my lot in with the corporate crooks who've stolen the public domain out from under us. The fact of the matter is that Walt Disney is the poster child for the public domain. Walt's greatest works were built by taking off-the-shelf parts and stories and remixing them in novel and useful ways. Lessig notes that Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey cartoon, was a remix of a popular film called "Steamboat Bill." Exploring the bonus material on the latest DVD release of the cartoon shows that not only did Walt thrive on the public domain, but that the Disney Company's interest is in closing off that domain [stanford.edu] to everyone else:
"Orchestra starts playing opening verses of 'Steamboat Bill.' Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.'s latest films with an opening that copies the music, and see how far your Walt Empire gets."
Any artist who claims that her work is 100% original is lying or self-deluded. Art is embedded in culture. Art is a web, and it is enmeshed with the art that came before it and comes after it. Deriding the public domain as the refuge of the unimaginative makes about as much sense as pissing on coders who don't write their own OSes (or invent their own non-Turing, non-Von Neumann, non-non-Von Neumann computing engines, for that matter).
Civil Disobediance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What has happened to the USA? (Score:3, Insightful)
You remember, the era in which all corporations were evil and all we needed in the world was peace and love. Looks like the kids grew up and decided that copyrights on peace and love were a whole lot better than the real thing.
Re:I hate to make this a party-line issue, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Conservatives
Renquist
O'Conner
Sca
Thomas
Kennedy
Liberals
Souter
Stevens
Ginsburg
Breyer
The "moderates" or swing votes are usually Souter, O'Conner and Kennedy. Ginsberg, Breyer, Thomas, and Scalia are all "hardliners (Note:all appoined after the partisian bickering on both sides that has followed since the Bork nomination)" and rarely break from their positions.
Of course you may note that all three opinions were written by the liberal wing. I don't think this case followed usual party lines as "party" positins are not well-established on this issue.
Re:EVER?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The USA has followed its own laws (Score:1, Insightful)
No, because they aren't a *person*. And who forms public opinion? Oh, that's right, it's a dwindling number of corporations.
> We can't sir, we charged money for our products. Now they're free.
WTF? How about producing a competitive product or service? You know, something people will actually pay money for? Forgive my naitivity, but isn't this what capitilism all about?
The extension of Copyright may fire back (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Did you write your senators and congresspersons? How many of your friends, classmates, coworkers and relatives did?
2. Did anyone you know, or yourself, go out and get petitions signed and sent to appropriate lobby groups, senators, congresspersons?
3. Did you contribute to any anti-copyrite extention lobby groups?
4. Did you, or anyone you know, do any of the above actions with regards to the elimination of SOFT MONEY, which is really the core of the problem with US politics?
Until Soft Money policy is banned in the US, and all CORPORATE ENTITY DONATIONS to politics in general is banned, and people actually get off of their Sunday football couch and cozy lives to do something about something they believe in, nothing will change. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever will, the US will fail as a political system and create a world war destroying our race before the average American actually makes an effort to be heard, make a change, and limit corporate influence in politics.
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?
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.
Re:Of the people? No. Of the Multi-national corps. (Score:2, Insightful)
You couldn't be more wrong. Although I completely agree with your sentiment as well as the sentiment of the parent post, it is important to realize that people are stupid. I mean really _really_ stupid.
In the Real World^TM 'public interest' does not exist nor do we have any kind of 'us'. The American public interest is made up of the have's and have not's and everything in between. The 'public' is just the name for a society chock full of individuals that are selfish, dumb, amoral beings.
Event's such as this further enforce my belief that the majority are just a step above cro-magnon. Certainly, the Supremes are intelligent folk, but surely this kind of decision (like the presidential election fiasco) indicates some severe emotional immaturity for our oh so esteemed court.
Public libraries are just one possible recourse... (Score:2, Insightful)
What this means is that we need to fund and support not only your local public, government, and univeristy libraries, but also representatives willing to put their neck on the line to do the same.
I think we need to make sure that your library has the technology and capability to keep up with the times. Support local and national intiatives to protect what powers of preservation our libraries have left.
Re:The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest threat to any artist is obscurity.
If someone said they'd get your music played on the radio, but they wouldn't pay you anything for it (you get to keep your copyright though) I'm betting you'd jump at the chance because it would get your name out there and defeat obscurity for a little while.
I would expect that shoplifting physical media from stores costs artists more money than IP theft, because it simultaneously deprives you of royalties for the copies stolen AND it prevents other people from buying your work. If my local bookstore thinks it has two copies of a book on the shelf, they won't reorder it. If both copies were stolen, then not only is the author out for those two copies, but also loses because nobody else will see the books.
I'm basically rehashing a lot of Eric Flint's ideas, which can be read in an essay at his publisher's website, here [baen.com].
Supreme Court says "not our problem!" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Civil Disobediance (Score:3, Insightful)
a) clog up the jails with people to the point that economic collapse is threatened by the burden of supporting the jails (forcing a change in the laws).
b) get lots of press so that people are enraged sufficiently to vote for change.
You don't need good legal counsel for either purpose.
Re:Destroying the diversity of works... (Score:1, Insightful)
I hope to heck that some idiot Congressman trying to put together a family tree photo album is told that at some point in the near future: "no, I can't copy your old family pictures since the right to copy them belongs to the photographer." This includes school photos, wedding photos, and all that sort of stuff. So now, you have to wait for the photographer to die, then wait another 70 years before you own pictures of yourself and your loved ones. This law is not only unconstitutional (I'm with Breyer and Stevens on this one) but morally bankrupt from the get go. Why should copyright last well over 100 years, and patents only 20? I'm sorry, that's insane.
Re:Destroying the diversity of works... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawyers didn't ask the right questions. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let us ask this question about 'fairness': If I write a book and copyright it today under the existing law, and next week Congress decides to repeal the 20-year extension, is it fair to me to take those 20 years away from my copyright after I've agreed to the terms of the contract by publishing my work?
If it's wrong to reduce the term ex post facto, then it's equally wrong to increase it.
Posting as AC because I'm at work, but it isn't hard to figure out who I am...
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO
A Strange Thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post makes absolutly no sense whatsoever. Just typical paranoid ranting. No one is being forced to keep their material in copyright forever and ever. It's only an OPTION.
If I write a book and make millions of dollars it's perfectly within my rights to tell my family to make their own fortune and put my works in the public domain upon my death or whenever I feel like it.
Oh no, we can't use Mickey Mouse. What will we ever do?
Same thing we've been doing for thousands of years, Pinky: come up with our own ideas.
The few anal retentive bastards who can't let things go when they're done with them (and Disney is far from done with Mickey Mouse so get over the fact they still have copyright) are not going to affect the world in any significant manner.
There are millions of people who are happy to let their things go to make up for the few who aren't.
Ben
Re:EVER?! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is what I have a problem with. Just because it is ok in the EU does not mean that it is ok in the US. The US constitution reads, in part:
The Congress shall have power ... 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 (US Constitution, Article I, Section 8)
I have been meaning to research this. I just don't see how "securing for limited times to authors" can reasonably be translated to any time period measured from the death of the author.
Are they sure that they won? (Score:3, Insightful)
This was a truly bad year for the American recording industry sales were way down. They got their wish - end of Napster - what is that old saying about being careful what you wish for. The fact is that we rarely if ever see all the consequences of our actions.
What are some of the outcomes of this ruling for Disney. Many I do not know. Now Diseny will have to defend more product over more time, Will Disney be able to handle this load that holds them to the past and innovate fast enough to keep with the new competitors? Will the copyright laws become so bloated and vile that the American people will just start ignoring them?
If there are too many laws trying to do too much the effect is that soon for all practical purposes the laws become impossible to enforce. This is already happening in the US - our courts are becoming more and more over loaded. What good is a copyright law that takes 10 to 20 years to enforce, we are getting there.
The system worked (Score:4, Insightful)
Today, my side lost, but the system worked. A large majority of justices, from across the political spectrum, came together to decide that they would not second-guess Congress. Checks and balances were applied, and the court decided that Congress could pass such an extension within the Constitution. That is an example of the system working, not the system failing. Instead of trying to push a policy from the bench, the court erred on the side of caution. When campaign finance reform comes before the court, and when (I hope) the court again defers to Congress, remember that consistency is a virtue.
For those of you who commented before reading the decisions (and I suspect that would be the majority), go back and go over all the opinions. Don't read it to rip every sentence that you don't like; read it to understand the logic behind it. If you still disagree, that's fine.
Whining about corrupt judges and evil conspiracies, however, will not serve you. Constructive action, like joining the EFF, writing to your Congressmen, and voting, will serve you.
Re:A Strange Thought (Score:2, Insightful)
We live in an age where almost any work (music, books, etc.) can be digitally reproduced and proliferated endlessly, but because of the perversion of the copyright system, so much of our art and culture is lost.
The problem is that except for a tiny minority of works, almost all music and books become less popular over time and go into obscurity. Why should a corporation invest in printing a book or CD year after year if they derive no profit from it? Yet, there might be a few thousand people who desire this work of art, and they are denied access to these works. This is not what the framers of the constitution intended. Since locking up a copyright costs a corporation nothing and releasing something into the public domain can only cost potential future profits, it is not in the best interest of these corporations to release copyrights! As the years go by, 99% of our music and books go out of print. Do you really think you'll be able to buy some obscure 80s band's CD 50 years from now? Yet the technology to archive this stuff is here!
Think of all the books and CDs that are out of print just from the last 10 years! I've spent plenty of money buying out of print books and CDs on eBay, often paying more than what it would have cost if I could buy it new in a store
The balance is severely tipped in favor of corporations right now with regard to copyright. The "if it's not in print the copyright expires" would be a fair adjustment to the system, so that companies get to keep deriving profit from their works if and only if they supply us with the means to acquire these works, and if they no longer are producing them the works go into the public domain quickly enough for them to be saved and digitally archived.
This does not prevent any company from making money off of their work, so why is this idea "ranting"?
Re:That sucks, but if that's the world we live in. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I disagree. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for a disaster... Imagine if Plato had been indefinitely copyrighted... or the Bible... or any of the other great works of history. The Pope would be able to license or dismiss ANY printing of the Bible... how would the protestants feel about that?
Disney is likely to live INFINITELY long (e.g. until there is a major change in the world order that makes the arguement moot). Why should they have more rights than an individual copyright holder? "Because they will continue to re-invest"?
It isn't about what's good for the economy in the short term... it's about what's good for society... OFTEN different things.
(Clearcutting all the forests is good for the economy... in the short term)
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.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't understand the real problem, do you? Soft money is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
The problem is that the primary source of information people have about the candidates they can vote for is tightly controlled by a small group of very large corporations. Those corporations that don't own the media of course make deals with those that do. More profit for the media corporations that way.
And since the media corporations have their own agendas, on top of the agendas that the corporations they make deals with have, the presentation of the candidates to the public is heavily biased. You'd be a fool to believe differently: the corporations that own the media aren't going to give favorable (if any) exposure to candidates that they or their partners feel they can't "work with".
And so, candidates that would heavily support the rights of individuals at the expense of corporations fade into obscurity before they even get a chance to be seen. And as a result, the general public never learns about them and never votes for them en masse (you can't vote for someone you don't know about, and you're unlikely to vote for someone you know little to nothing about).
The two major parties know this, which is why they pick candidates that the corporations can "work with". And the cycle continues, round and round.
Fixing the soft money problem won't do shit to solve the real problem; the soft money problem is a sham, a distraction. Do you really think a Congressman is swayed by a few thousand dollars? That's what you'd have to believe if you believe that soft money is the problem. But with TV spots costing millions, it just doesn't make sense for a few thousand dollars to make the difference in a congressman's position. There must be something more going on behind the scenes: the deals I described above.
This crap isn't going to stop until corporate personhood is thrown out. And I don't think that's ever going to happen: there's no mechanism in the system the way it is right now that could make that possible, no way to get there from here. That's why we in the U.S. are fux0r3d.
Oh, as to the Supreme Court decision, I told you who read Kuro5hin that this was going to happen [kuro5hin.org]. You people who still think that not all branches of government have been bought and paid for by the corporations had better start waking up to reality.
Re:The USA has followed its own laws (Score:3, Insightful)
> because public opinion says they're evil?
No, that isnt at all why they need to lose rights.
They need to lose some rights because they are not people. I know the law says they are people, but the law is out right wrong.
Do you honestly think corporations should have all the rights they have right now?
How can you possibly argue that is even a close to fair aggreement compared with real people?
If you want to argue that logic, Disney should not at all exist right now. While some people do grow to be over 100 years old, very very few do. Most die long before that.
So to aggree with your statement, if corporations want the same rights real people have, they need to be just like real people.
Disney should not exist. They are old enough to be concidered dead. A real person may live to be 100, but not many live to be much older.
We should not allow any corporation to live forever either.
If they want equal rights, give it to them, then force them to disapear after they hit 80 years old or so.
That way once the company hits a certain age, it shuts down and goes out of business, and then all their work becomes public domain..
Which is actually how and why copyright exists in this nation in the first place.
The problem with corpations having the rights they do right now, is because when this country was started, it was to ESCAPE a government that runs a country the way we are being run RIGHT NOW.
America is a hypoctrical country.
We only started it because we didnt like how other governments controlled their people, and now that we are a seperate country we have become much much worse than anything we could have escaped from at the time.
Copyright isnt why people create.
Its why _greedy people_ create.
Everyone else creates because they want to or love to create.
Down with copyright...
Your claims are not valid. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your claims to "rights" are no more real than the "divine right of kings" which was once unquestioned throughout the world.
Your kids will be better, stronger people if you teach them to provide for themselves, instead of trying to provide everything for them by restricting the activities of everyone else.
Evolve. This isn't the 12th century, regardless of what John Ashcroft would have you believe.
Re:Slashdot Challenge 2003 (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why I've long argued for a general discussion board to exist alongside the news commentary, where anyone could start their own topic thread. We've got journals, but those simply aren't high enough visibility to promote large discussions.
Venial, venal, and vain.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the writer had in mind VENAL [reference.com] -- as I did when I saw it, so it took a minute to figure out why the dictionary.com definition was "wrong"!
And
However, what I really dislike is the *retroactive* application of the law to existing copyright holders like Disney. It (1) makes no sense under the Copyright Clause purpose to promote creativity, (2) stomps on the freedom of speech ethic if not right, and (3) looks like outright cash quid pro quo (well, might as well say it, that's what it is).
The retroactivity portion is what the dissents focus on, though I haven't plowed through it all. Without retroactivity, groups like Disney would have much much much less incentive to push for things like the Sonny Bono Act, as there would be no benefit for decades. The Sonny Bono Act provides Disney with money right away, with (early days) Mickey otherwise "expiring" this year.
Don't forget, this thing can be repealed. The chances are slim, but it's not written in stone.
© 2003 Mickey M. Mouse, all rights reserved.
Or not (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, it's quite clear that Mr. Ice's song simply could not have existed (in the form that was so sadly popular) without the bass riff from "Under Pressure." Whether he changed an 8th-rest to an 8th-note is of little importance. He needed "Under Pressure" to be around so that he could make his song. (It saved him the effort of actually writing a bass line...)
I say give credit where it is due. Teeny-tiny modifications to a bass line does not a composer make. Yeah, the songs are different. That does not justify Mr. Ice pretending he wrote something he didn't.
There is an art to sampling. To making something new and interesting out of older works. Some people are incredibly good at this and it should be rewarded for their creativity. It is a new form of composition. However, the creative process involved is re-invention. I see a difference between basing your work on samples of other works, and writing your own music based on your ideas of how chord progressions, melody, harmony, dissonance and resolution should be implemented. Of course, this line is sure to be fuzzied in the large scope of music. In the case of "Ice Ice Baby" it is not fuzzy at all.
Think of it like a research paper for English class. If you quote someone else's work you have to say where you got it from. You can't just act as though you wrote it. Otherwise, it is plagiarism. That's exactly what happened here. He plagiarized the Bowie/Queen song, got caught, then tried to play it off with the lame argument that it wasn't the same bass line. Please. Anyone who's not deaf and has heard the two songs can hear how dependent Mr. Ice was on "Under Pressure" for his track.
I am perfectly happy to be wow-ed by people who are good at sampling. Just don't insult me by saying you wrote something you obviously did not. I'll give you credit for your talents. I want you do the same for those that came before you. (Especially when their work is helping you out.) If nothing else, think of it as spreading the love. You might sample something I'd never hear of otherwise. And I might decide I want to check out where it came from. I don't want to do a Google search to find out what it is. Put it in the liner notes. If it was good enough to go in your song, isn't it worth telling everyone about it?
Copyrights are too strong. I just don't think this example makes a strong case.
-r
Re:Okay, so who wants to go to jail. (Score:1, Insightful)
Put it into a movie without paying and you would get sued by warner brothers (as I think they own the copyright).
I have been thinking of ways of performing civil disobedience on this, but I have a high standard that if I should get arrested it should because of a something that gets noticed and is worthwhile.
Re:The answer to this is an unfortunate "yes" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:you are WRONG! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually this is a Strange Thought. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:true political power comes from rope, guillotin (Score:1, Insightful)
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
--Chairman Mao, "grass roots" activist and mass murderer
Re:The first thing this makes me think is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, IAA(non-practicing)L and it is pretty OBVIOUS to me that the CTEA is facially unconstituional for reasons that are most eloquently stated by Mr. Justice Stevens, who, I personally think, history will show to be one of the great Constitutional scholars of the 20th Century.
Let's look at the flip side of the question for a moment. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Congress, in it's infinite wisdom (such as it is), decided to shorten copyright terms. You had better believe that The Gang of Five (MPAA members) would exceed the speed of light getting to the nearest federal courthouse to sue on the basis that reducing copyright terms was an unconstitutional "uncompensated taking" of property without due process of law (read, court proceedings) in violation of their rights under the Fifth Amendment. They would be entirely within their rights to do so and they would be LEGALLY and CONSTITUTIONALLY correct.
Now, let's turn to the situation as it REALLY exists. "We, the People" OWN the "public domain." When Congress extends copyright terms they are "taking" property rights from US and giving them to the content creation industry without compensation and without Due Process of Law. The law is rarely perfectly symmetrical in it's effect, but the thrust of Mr. Justice Stevens's dissent is that it SHOULD be in this case. The unfortunate fact is that Lessig missed making this argument in his brief and in his oral argument and IT IS THE SINGLE MOST POTENT argument against this horrible law!
Any second year law student (Constitutional Law is a first-year course) could have told you that the First Amendment argument was a loser from the get-go. Likewise, I think the "Copyright Clause" was, predictably, not going to fly although the argument that "Congress should not be able to do piecemeal that which it cannot do wholesale" has a nice ring to it as a battle cry. The unmade Fifth Amendment argument would, however, have been overwhelming because the Court has clear and unambiguous precedent from the various "condemnation (as in seizure for a public use) by building code and/or easement and/or zoning ordinance" cases it has dealt with over the years.
The common law rule (and yes, the United States is governed by Common Law more than by statute) is that once a work is "published" anyone has the right to reproduce that part of it that they can because the act of publication makes it public property. The "Copyright Clause" (more accurately "The Monopolies Clause") gives Congress the power to grant limited monopolies "To Promote
What to do about the situation? Well, a class action lawsuit challenging Congress's power to TAKE from us and GIVE to them would be nice
Would the EFF, ACLU, FSF and others be willing to fund such a suit? Who knows?
Welcome imported (copyrighted) products! (Score:2, Insightful)