O'Reilly On How Copyright Got To Its Current State 177
Schneed Tweedly writes "William Patry is one of the leading scholars in the world on copyright law. For a long time he maintained a blog, "Patry on Copyright," that discussed new cases as they came out. A few days ago, though, he shut down his blog because 'the Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing.' O'Reilly has a long post up on their news site discussing Patry's retirement from blogging and giving a history of copyright that explains how we got where we are."
Re:No Mention of the Copyright Extension Act? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd argue that the growth of piracy is not only due to the increased ease, thanks to computers and the internet, but also due to the perceived fairness. After all, copyright is supposed to be a social contract where we allow the creator to profit from their creations so that we can enrich our own culture. But its been so lopsided towards the creators these days. Pretty much all of our modern culture is locked out from you unless you are willing to pay the price.
A large problem is that most people just don't feel copyright infringement is immoral anymore. How much of that is because the creator's aren't keeping their end of the bargain? If you had free access to 10-year old games, books, and music, wouldn't that lower the incentive to commit infringement on the current-day stuff?
Re:Is it really? (Score:4, Interesting)
How is increasing the copyright term for something written by a dead guy going to affect the people downloading the matrix off bittorrent?
You rip us off by pirating so we'll rip you off by keeping stuff locked up indefinately and vice versa? Face it, anything like a social contract is royally screwed, people don't respect the copyright holders and the copyright holders don't respect us. They're just playing to grab all the money that they "lose" according to themselves and to hell with the rest.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No Mention of the Copyright Extension Act? (Score:5, Interesting)
But [it's] been so lopsided towards the creators these days.
Not the creators, the copyright holders. Those are not always the same people. Courtney Love does the math [salon.com] is still a good place to start.
This is important to me personally because I feel that our genuine intellectual lifeblood, the creators, are frequently screwed over by lawyers and businessmen who legally own the copyrights. As a Nietzschean, of course I feel that businessmen are supposed to be at the bottom of the social pyramid, and the creators, our genuine artists, at the top. The legal types are supposed to be a support mechanism for our creators. Instead, the artists are treated as a commodity to generate cash-flow for the suits.
Somehow these briefcase-wielding cocksuckers have flipped the whole damn world upside down.
Re:sonny Bono, Copyright and Harry Potter (Score:3, Interesting)
She was a broke author who couldn't find the monetary might of Warner Bros, yet it is extremely easy to verify with the ISDN number that her books were in fact published before Harry Potter.
It is possible this is all one big coincidence. But it sure doesn't look like one.
Re:sonny Bono, Copyright and Harry Potter (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd also like to add you should read that entire Wikipedia page and you'll find over and over again Rowling sued people who were in their legal right, and occasionally she has won court cases, likely do to her wealth and ability to fight lengthy legal battles.
She has claimed parody books have no right to parody, and that reference books are theft.
Rowling is a perfect example of someone who abuses copyright and has no clue what the law actually states.
Re:No Mention of the Copyright Extension Act? (Score:5, Interesting)
'd argue that the growth of piracy is not only due to the increased ease, thanks to computers and the internet, but also due to the perceived fairness. After all, copyright is supposed to be a social contract where we allow the creator to profit from their creations so that we can enrich our own culture.
Yup. I feel like it's time for me to jump in with my standard copyright spiel: The problem with copyright right now is that the common modern conception is out of line with why it was created. It was created as a ploy to encourage writers to write books. The idea was to say, "If you write a book, you get a few years to profit from it before other publishers can poach your work." So the purpose was to provide a limited benefit to the creator of a work in order to encourage creation, the intended end being to promote the common good.
Some time later, the whole thing got re-conceptualized into guaranteeing the creator a *right* to have control over his/her own creation. Many people now imagine that this was the original intent of copyright-- that authors have some kind of God-given inalienable right to control their own work absolutely and for the rest of time, and "copyright" is intended to guarantee authors that right. Later, people even forgot about the authors and passed that right only to the corporations who "own" the stories and characters. The famous case is Disney, which ironically has fed off of older public domain characters and stories while insisting that they retain perpetual rights to their own characters. Still, copyright wasn't intended to be this "right" to control all possible incarnations and derivative works for all time, because art has always reused common stories and characters.
But still, copyright was treated as protection against *other publishers* printing and selling copies. After all, it was unimaginable that some individual would make millions of copies of the work and distribute them for free. Of course, the Internet comes along and that exact unimaginable thing happens. So then, when the business model of the big media companies gets threatened, suddenly "copyright" again becomes something more than it was intended to be. Suddenly now it's not just the perpetual right to decide when the creation is published and sold, but it's also the right to control any time that the work is evoked in any situation at any time by any person. A "copy" is now a nebulous concept, so instead you need a license to read the book, to listen to the music, to watch the movie, etc. But copyrights were never really intended to be used against individuals for *reading* a book, but only against people/companies who would republish the book.
So even though the intent of copyright was to place the common good above the greed of publishers who wished to poach works that they hadn't invested in, it's now seen as an inalienable right that exists, by nature, above the common good. Further, it's being used by greedy publishers to harm the arts by stifling use of old characters and stories, in order to put off the need to invest in new ventures by milking the old ones.
Rant over. And no, I didn't RTFA.
Re:How it really worked: (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't mean to intimate that ALL copyright was bad. Just the current length and breadth that it affords a well-financed creator is stifling to society in general. Rowling and others have construed copyright to control whether or not other people can mention or even significantly reference their works, which is WELL outside the bounds of what was intended by copyright. She sued the Harry Potter Lexicon because she INTENDED to make another encyclopedia of Harry Potter stuff. And the law, as it is, has to take her seriously. How fucked up is that?
Re:No Mention of the Copyright Extension Act? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wrote to my representatives in Congress about the ever lengthening copyright term. The response was that there are copyrighted materials that are still bringing in lots of money to the US economy from overseas. If we allow those copyrights to expire, we will signficantly increase our trade deficit.
Re:Reasonable Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never understood why we can't have a simple system that basically says once you've got a legitimate copy of something yourself, you can use it however you like, but you can't distribute copies to others during the copyright period, and that copyright period should be set long enough to allow for reasonable exploitation by the people who created and distributed the original content but no longer; a few years rather than a few decades strikes me as fair in most cases. Don't let copyright holders use artificial hackery like DRM and the DMCA to extend their powers, and don't subsequently change the law to extend copyright terms beyond that basic level. Throw greedy infringers who don't want to pay up like everyone else in jail like any other criminal.
Re:How it really worked: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd take you seriously if this were JK Rowling's children or her some decades later. As it is, the Harry Potter series is slightly over 10 years old. This would be within the bounds of copyright in the US as established originally in the constitution.
So yes, it's completely sane for them to take her seriously. What would (and probably will) be fucked up is when decades down the line her children or some rights holder sues someone over something Harry Potter related.
The obvious solution is to drastically shorten copyright lengths, with appropriate balancing of the author's rights against large corporations that could simply wait out the copyright.
Re:Copyright was not originally a moral issue. (Score:2, Interesting)
The American founders didn't even want that much, it was grudgingly conceded to smooth trade with Britain. Copyright is the leverage permitting private interests to shift democracy from its foundation. If that sounds alarmist, you're not clearly thinking the process through to its natural end.
Re:How it really worked: (Score:2, Interesting)
That science-fiction authors nowadays can never seem to write a concise little work and leave it at that is increasingly remarked on as a blight on the genre.
I've ran into a couple of authors, science fiction and otherwise, who should have wrapped it up before they did. I can grant you that. However, there have been many series that I've read that were absolutely fucking awesome, and would have lost a great deal of value had they cut it short. Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen [wikipedia.org] series is one example of such, just off the top of my head. Hell, he's still not done with it, and I'm definitely glad for it. Despite the number of books written in it, I've found it far more enjoyable than even the Wheel of Time - though honestly, I do like that one, too.
Frankly, if you don't like the series, or get tired of it, all you have to do is not buy the next book in that series. Then it can end for you, and you're not supporting a work that you don't enjoy. Those of us who do, in fact, like a long series of books will be just as happy to keep supporting them.
Or perhaps you can write a better story, and keep it down to a trilogy. If it's a good one, then everyone wins.
Its current state? I'm SOAKING in it! :D (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a writer, you see, and since literature isn't the most fun thing to enjoy on the Web, I pursued a long-held dream of teaching myself to also draw, and I began a webcomic. Not only that, it's sci-fi, and some thought has gone into it. Since I grew up on Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein (ok, and E.E. Doc Smith) there needed to be thought if I was gonna be satisfied with the story.
So, I will start right off by asserting that I have a STAKE in this argument, by pointing to tallyroad.com [tallyroad.com] which is the webcomic (and story) in question. This establishes that I have to answer for my theorizing- it's not abstract to me.
Having said that, notice something about that site? It announces the update schedule of monday and friday (there's a subpage, Daily Kitten, that updates every day- I have to draw every day if I'm going to improve) and it announces a web rating, Web MA which means the strip may have graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, basically all the stuff I was enjoying in 1996 on usenet
But it doesn't have my NAME on it, or a copyright notice. What the hell?
I'll tell you, then you can tell me if I'm out of my mind or if I've hit on something new here.
I see my webcomic and artist compatriots flipping out about copyright these days. There's legislation in the US underway called the Orphan Works act, in which a company could take your IP, not succeed in finding you, use the IP for profit, and then if you turn up they are required to pay some sort of set fee. The whole point is to open up the commons and make materials more available by default. As someone who's written code under the GPL, I'm more sympathetic to this than a typical artist, but there's a serious catch to that proposal.
The catch is, if you do an end run around copyright that way, you open up 'dead' commons and material created by people who honestly cannot be found, BUT the most likely users are large corporations, and it destroys the ability of a creator to be offended and seek statutory damages for infringement. It's the 'calvin pissing on a logo' problem institutionalized. It becomes really easy to use IP against the creator's wishes- again look at Bill Watterson's refusal to build a licensing empire. Look at Disney's determination to never have their IP associated with anything seamy- Disney fired some animators in a rage for having made a stag reel just as a private joke. I'm inclined to think that when a creator or copyright holder is really passionate about what's legitimate use, they should have a say- maybe not forever, but they start off with a say.
We're looking at that breaking down- we're also looking at hypertrophy of copyright privileges but it's all centered in corporate hands. I agree it's depressing, but where some of my friends are losing their minds over this, I have a different attitude that might carry the day.
You see, I figure art is an ACTIVITY. If you're an artist or an IP creator of any note, you have a particular flavor all to yourself, and it's your business to develop that. If you're no good, maybe it doesn't get anywhere. If you're fantastic, maybe it's a huge hit, and people want to imitate you- and some imitations will get traction- but if people want NEW IP of that flavor, they have to come to you.
This is why I'm not hammering on the copyright or plastering my name all over Tally Road- I've got the domain, and thanks to Slashdot I've got it registered at a French registrar to roadblock any funny business in case US law gets flakier around domain name ownership. More importantly, I have the story for Tally Road worked out on paper and no possible imitator could know exactly where I propose to take it- or pull it off the exact way I'll be do
Re:Copyright was not originally a moral issue. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vanishing Art (Score:3, Interesting)
Two points. First, even if we went back to a 14/14 system today, the greater majority of works being distributed on P2P networks would still be illegal distributions. Going to a 14/14 system is NOT going to fix the problems with copyright (assuming you agree that there is a problem with copyright in the first place).
Second, 14 years might be too long if you assume that ALL works are going to lose value but when you consider that some properties can have sequels and derivatives made well after 14 years. I'm currently playing Civilization: Revolution, a game made well after the 14 year cutoff you seem to think is such a great idea.
The public domain is NOT going away. Current legislation is not killing the public domain. The only exception to this is the Eldred case that temporarily pulled and delayed a portion of works entrance in to the public domain (due to an EU directive by the way, not lobbying by Disney or the RIAA/MPAA). This, of course, assumes that copyrighted material is being created at a fixed rate. This couldn't be further from the truth as the amount of intellectual property created today is astronomical.
One last assumption that people need to get over is that you MUST be able to use the original work in your own for copyright to work. Any good artist (of which I am one) can be inspired by works both in the public domain and works protected by copyright without touching the original work at all.
US copyright insanity... (Score:3, Interesting)
Andy