The Economist Weighs In For Shorter Copyright Terms 386
lxmota writes "The Economist says that long copyright terms are hindering creativity, and that shortening them is the way to go: 'Largely thanks to the entertainment industry's lawyers and lobbyists, copyright's scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years' protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act." They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.'"
When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.
It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal [arstechnica.com].
Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.
And of course these speaches [baens-universe.com] on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole trouble with this is that it provides a completely unfair playing field for inventors, which are the people that the concept of copyright was meant to protect in the first place. Unfortuantely, being right by law is only ever as good as the lawyer that can argue that you are right. Big companies mean more money, which provides better lawyers.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Insightful)
"...it provides a completely unfair playing field for inventors, which are the people that the concept of copyright was meant to protect in the first place..."
Err, no...
Inventors get Patents, not copyrights.
Copyrights were for writers and other artists.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
As always, the case against Intellectual Monopoly:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm [ucla.edu]
(Not that I'm against it all, but sometimes you have hear from people on one extreme to balance out the extremist corps like Disney, etc.)
Re: (Score:2)
I think reasonable is about midway between the likes of Harlan Ellison and Disney Corp and Richard Stallman.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.
It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal [arstechnica.com].
Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.
And of course these speaches [baens-universe.com] on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.
Maybe you should support the Pirate Party [pirateparty.org.uk]? When (ha) we come to power we'll cut the duration of copyright to 10 years.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation. For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death). That could have been prevented with modern copyright law. A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that (although the result couldn't possibly be worse than the cartoons). People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work. I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.
In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance, you're also going to have to find a way to convince people that giving control to the original author isn't all that important. Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Funny)
Basically the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
So who is the guardian of snow white?
Jack Horner?
The 9 tailed demon fox?
The skin walkers of indian lore?
Pride and Prejudice?
"Fables" comic book (which is excellent) wouldn't even exist if all the characters in it were locked up. and it's an excellent *new* creation.
When did our culture become the exclusive property of "royal" families?
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find illuminating is drawing a sharp distinction between copying and plagiarism. Show those people that they've confused and conflated these two concepts, and they often come around.
No one sharing a few Beatles songs is seriously trying to claim they wrote those songs, they're only making copies. A lot of people object to removing copyright because they're convinced it protects against plagiarism. Copyright can be used toward that end, yes. But we can protect against plagiarism just fine without copyright and all the other bad, monopolistic things copyright does. I think plagiarism is already covered under statutes against fraud and misrepresentation. But if it makes everyone more comfortable, we can have a law specifically against plagiarism.
Then, what really is wrong with "fanfic"? Nothing. Unless someone is trying to misrepresent their own work as official, and why should anyone do that? Only to cash in in some way on the name recognition and the copyright monopoly that grants far too much control to the author anyway. If there isn't copyright, that incentive is much reduced.
Some examples. One is this Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling squashed. The people who worked on the lexicon put a lot of time into it, and they got screwed thanks to copyright and this idea that somehow they weren't the victims, that instead they were victimizing poor little J.K. Rowling and making it impossible for her to profit from doing her own lexicon her way, when she saw they were right about it being profitable and changed her mind on letting them do it. Obviously, she's no dummy, and so I guess she was pushed and manipulated into this stance by publishers whose opinions she perhaps trusts overmuch. It goes against her own philosophy as revealed in her works, so far as I can tell. That is, what would Harry Potter do in a similar situation?
Another example is the huge library of CD track information built up by thousands of fans and utilized by ripping software. Thousands of people each contributed a tiny little bit, but the music industry keeps trying to assert control over such efforts out of a misplaced sense that they really do have some right to every possible potential profit such a collection of info might be able to generate, or might hypothetically prevent them from being able to make somehow. That last is one of the most anti-competitive, bad results possible. The controllers deny a good tool to the public so that their much inferior, cruddy workarounds, if any, can maybe generate a profit that is, frankly, not deserved. It's as if they were granted a monopoly on the horse and buggy, then were allowed to interpret that as a monopoly on all forms of transport, and then opted to shut down the airline, auto, railroad, and river shipping industry so that everyone has to buy more buggies, or walk. And if some enterprising person tries to finesse the restrictions by, say, using cows to pull a buggy, they're vilified as cheaters. There are many people who would seriously argue that Wikipedia should be shut down because it harms the print encyclopedia business.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just point out that with a 20 year copyright term, they'd be able to *legally* download a library of any/every song & movie created before 1990. People older than 30 would be signing up in droves. Might as well make greed work *for* us, for once.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
You say this, and then you follow it up with an example of two authors who died, and are thus bereft of all control over their works. Why should people who did NOT write the works (okay, Christopher Tolkien might be given latitude here) ever be given control over the copyrights, especially in an age where that copyright is becoming ever more perpetual?
Mitchell didn't want a sequel written. Tough. Given her feelings, we can consider her lucky that she didn't live to see it. The Tolkien estate is protecting the legacy of the literature. Good on them. But like the works of literature before them — some of which were the basis of other, later, better works — these works will eventually fall into the public domain, and anyone can do anything with them. I, for one, am not willing to extend copyright until the heat death of the Universe (plus 70 years) to prevent it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Given her feelings, we can consider her lucky that she didn't live to see it.
I find your sympathy and compassion admirable, good sir. Basically your argument amounts to, "I don't like it, so she can suck it." Even if you are right, which often isn't the case in political situations, you still aren't going to convince anyone with that argument. You look like a self-centered fool. So the question remains, what argument can we use to help people see that short copyright is good, even though it removes control from the original authors?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A technical answer to that might manifest shortly in the musical scene.
"Music" follows set mathematical grammars, and as such, has only a finite number of "Pleasant" sounding progressions. It is entirely possible for all possible "Pleasant" musical scores to become copyrighted, and thus, essentially destroy the process of creating "new" musical scores. (Since the only way to make such new scores would be to either radically redefine musical structure (would require rewiring human brains)-- or to utilize th
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html [spiderrobinson.com]
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the major problems with the current state of copyright is that everything is copyrighted for these ridiculous long terms. I'd like to see something like a basic 15-20 year copyright, after which you would have to re-register and maybe even pay a property tax to continue your monopoly.
My argument for regular people, then, would be "If you want to keep control, you have to show that you want control and you have to pay for it, just like real property where you can't abandon it and you have to pay property tax."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, I don't know. In the world of real property, there used to be something called a fee tail. Basically, this was a form of ownership in which land was owned by A, and all of A's heirs. It could not be sold or otherwise gotten rid of, unless the family line died out (although this could cause massive lawsuits if one branch of the family tree died, and others vied to take over). In practice, it could not be rented or mortgaged, since the tenant would be kicked out as soon as the person they dealt with died.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should people who did NOT write the works [...] ever be given control over the copyrights [...]?
(Referring to heirs.)
Well, for one thing, it greatly reduces the chances that creators will be murdered so that publishers can get access to their works. For another, it increases the motivation for the elderly and the terminally ill to create new works. I'm all for reducing copyright length, but I tend to think a fixed period is best/safest.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death).
That's not a sequel and shouldn't be treated as such. It's fan fiction, and I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it's not marketed as canon. From an "official" point of view, it doesn't exist.
I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.
Plagiarism would be if she wrote a different ending to the story, and published the whole as her own. Meanwhile, did you stop to consider the artistic qualities of the sequel?
See, that's exactly the problem with copyright debates: you're treating the right to use ideas, the right to modify existing works and the right to distribute existing works as one inseparable topic.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's an interesting case of an authorized sequel that was only temporarily accepted as canon.
H. Beam Piper wrote a pair of novels ("Little Fuzzy" and "Fuzzy Sapiens", the first a Huge Award nominee in 1963) before he committed suicide. There were rumors of a third "final" Fuzzy novel (the second novel had a sort-of cliffhanger), but his effects after his death were so scattered no one could ever find it.
Eventually, his estate authorized William Tuning to write the final Fuzzy novel in the trilogy ("Fuzzy
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.
The continued economic success of Disney makes me inclined to believe otherwise. The vast majority of their content is ripped directly from Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, and others. Occasionally, they even plagiarize more modern content, like Kimba, the White Lion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion
Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.
"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"
Why didn't the drafters add in: ... To promote Warmth and Welfare of the Populace, by securing for limited Times to Citizens and Free Peoples the exclusive Right to the Shirts on their Backs"
"The Congress shall have Power
The second version sounds absolutely ridiculous, because, unlike ideas, we actually own our clothing. The founding fathers understood that publishing an idea is like pissing in the ocean. Once you decide to do that, you can't get it back...it's not your piss anymore; you don't own it.
TJ's thoughts on the matter:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe retarded notions such as "offical" keepers of fictional characters eg. tolkien, should be pandered to or encourged.
this idea that the author some how controls the works from beyond the grave is equally stupid, and deserves a bigger slap in the head.
20 year copyright terms were more then generous, if you haven't milked every drop of profit from a work in 20 years, your an incompetent fool who deserves to be driven out of business.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest we drop by the house of everyone that doesn't understand IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT, and slap them in the side of the head.
This is the best presentation of an argument I've heard in weeks. I can't imagine why you've never run for public office.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Funny)
I suggest we drop by the house of everyone that doesn't understand IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT, and slap them in the side of the head.
This is the best presentation of an argument I've heard in weeks.
True enough when it comes to copyright and patent debates on slashdot...
I can't imagine why you've never run for public office.
It would be far too exhausting. Can you imagine how many voters would need their heads slapped during the campaign?
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Funny)
It would be far too exhausting. Can you imagine how many voters would need their heads slapped during the campaign?
Wanted: Campaign volunteers
Requirements: At least one hand and a desire to change the country
Campaign slogans:
"Hit the IP industry where it hurts: Upside their heads."
"How can she slap? She slaps for copyright reform."
"Communicate with today's voters the way their parents once did: with a slap."
"Would you rather have 14 slaps or 95 slaps? We feel the same way about the length of copyright."
"How many slaps does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"
-This message sponsored by Students Litigating Against Pratty Publishers
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Informative)
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
That is one of the best arguments on the subject I've ever seen, and surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.
A lot of what he has predicted has come to pass. The relentless extension of copyright has certainly diluted it in the eyes of many, even with the threat of legal action it's clear that copyright is increasingly seen as outdated and people are happy to infringe it on a daily basis, whereas if it was for a short term and could be demonstrated of proven benefit to artists rather than greedy middle men who "drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress", people would be more likely to respect it.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution to that is to extend something like trademark law (which is perpetual) to cover characters and settings. If you create a sequel to something in the public domain then you'd have to clearly market it as unauthorised, unless you received permission from the creator to use their trademark. You could still write the sequel to Gone With The Wind, but it would have to be marketed as an unofficial sequel and there could be no (even implicit) indication that it was canonical.
This would also help protect big content franchises. Star Trek would now be out of copyright, but if you wanted to create an official novel, TV show, or film set in the universe then you'd need a license to the trademark. This would cleanly separate things into official material and fan fiction. Of course, given some of the recent output from Paramount, the fan fiction might be better, but that's the trademark owner's problem.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Insightful)
Your sister didn't have to read it, now did she? She loses absolutely nothing for said sequel existing. On the other hand, the people who did read and enjoy it would lose something had it been prevented from existing.
You have made an argument against, not for, copyright law.
And a lot of people say screnw that [fanfiction.net] and hijack it anyway. Which is okay, because Tolkien also used elements from common cultural heritage - the works of people who became him - to create his works, so why should it be held more sacred than them?
I notice a lot of people haven't objected to Disney ripping off everything from Tarzan to Jungle Book to Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves.
People are already just fine with this, as proven by the fact that Tolkien-inspired art doesn't seem to draw a negative response, nor do the orcs and elves in pretty much every fantasy work. In fact, they are constantly creating derivative works from everything imaginable. That's not a new phenomenom either, but has been with us ever since stone-age hunter-gatherers told stories around a campfire.
No, what you have to do is convince politicians that not criminalizing normal human behaviour is more important than bribes from Disney. That's never going to happen, so let's concentrate our efforts on improving various anonymizing networks like Freenet or Tor that make it easier to ignore such laws. That also has the added social benefit of countering censorship in general.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not really, I'm far more interested in the fine drama sites like this offer :). There's nothing like pouring myself a hot cup of coffee early in the morning, sitting in front of the computer, firing up the browser and seeing a story on Slashdot's the front page with a title like "Drug found to cause hallucinations! This proves that there is no afterlife!" and 700+ comments on it.
I love
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Funny)
For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind
So what, we should all suffer because your sister is a bitch?
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.
Some, you are thinking about some people. Most people do not care. Millions of downloaders disagree to the point of non-violent resistance to the law. They are breaking the law and risking million+ fines for downloading a few $10 movies, so they obviously either don't care or disagree with you strongly.
For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written
She'll get over it. She basically would like to dictate what other people will do with their culture, the one she barely contributed to. Oookay.
A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore
A lot of people did not read the books, they cannot care all that much. Those who are informed, know that Christofer Tolkien is the only guy with the guns, having edited The Silmarillion and other great works. Everyone else in that team is more of leech, and their efforts to defend the copyright did nothing but set back the influence of Tolkien's work. There are no hobbits in our games or comics, and that is not because of lack of interest or desire to introduce them.
People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work.
Pointless, meaningless generalizations.
In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance
We are already finding the economic balance, by the way of making cheap digital copies of the monuments of our culture. The copyright, being a monopoly, can only destroy the balance. If you believed that free markets work better than planned markets, you would agree immediately, but you seem to be all mixed up. If we wanted to ruin the economic balance, we would tighten up the copyright noose and started (over)charging for every freaking word you read and every moving picture you see. Yeah, let's make everyone pay for access to culture, even though there is no sound economic reason for doing so, unless we specifically want to segregate the society and create a caste of content producers, the mighty Brahmins, who own all the rights to creation and modification of content. Of course, this won't work while licenses like GPL and CC-SA provide a hedge around the public domain. Who needs expensive pop-culture, when people voluntarily create a double-free alternative? Look at Linux and BSD: they've dwarfed proprietary OSes in terms of how good they are, and now they are poised to crush them in the marketplace. So if you are that commited to proprietary culture, you better make copyleft explicitly illegal, or it will swallow the marketplace, because it will be cheaper and of superior quality.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If 14 years is optimal, than 7 years would be unreasonable. Not quite as unreasonable as 95 years, but unreasonable nonetheless.
The basic idea behind copyright (providing security to invest in creating new products) is one I can support, the current implementation of that idea significantly less so. It has come to a point where the copyright itself has become the business model instead of the product.
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
The length of copyright terms should be variable depending on the type of work...
A piece of music written today may still have relevance 14 years from now, but a piece of software probably won't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A piece of music written today may still have relevance 14 years from now, but a piece of software probably won't.
They're still selling classic video games on the Wii, most of which are older than 1996. I think you'd have to provide a method for extension of copyright by payment of a tax for certain properties (which do remain commercially viable).
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, copyright is not there to make profit, it is there to encourage progress.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think unreasonable means what you think it means. The concept you were looking for is "suboptimal". In many cases, a suboptimal solution is a very reasonable one. In fact, this is the case much more often than the most optimal solution is a reasonable one.
But personally, I think (and have said before) that copyright in the internet age should be no more than about 3 years, and probably even less. Back when the it took 20 years for societ
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
* Authorization of non-commercial sharing
* 5 years of commercial exclusivity
* +5 years if derivative non-commercial work is authorized
* +10 years if derivative commercial work is authorized (but you still want to get credit)
I am fine with this position.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We can't support that career for everyone who thinks they want to be a writer, obviously. Nobody would ever do
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if you use very short terms of, say 1-2 years, but more of them (perhaps a maximum length of 20 years), you increase the number of opportunities for an author who has sought copyright (indicating that they want it) to fail to renew the copyright (indicating that they no longer care), thus getting the work into the public domain that much sooner. Since the cost and effort to renew is minimal (a couple of blanks, a couple of checkboxes, send it in over the net if possible, by mail otherwise; the fee cou
Re:When they're right, they're right (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no problem with longer copyright terms... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, that leaves a hole for companies that may stop publication for a while and then want to start back up... I should think that they must maintain distribution for a certain minimum period before my above proposed 5-year clock would reset... perhaps at least six months or so.
Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, then there would be the equivalent of Patent-Troll-Companies.
They would just run websites to claim that their are still distributing the work (against a fee)
Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for this, but there needs to be some balance and if somebody isn't trying to make money off the idea, then perhaps it should go into the public domain.
Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a problem with long copyright terms as long as the definition of derivative work is as large as it is. I also have a problem with the preventative scope of copyright in general. Exclusive rights to profit from a specific production used to be the basis of copyright. But nowadays, that is just a minor aspect of copyright.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Think I'm willing to risk it? There was recently an idiotic [yahoo.com]
Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms.. (Score:4, Insightful)
To me copyright and patent terms should be getting shorter and shorter instead of longer and longer since:
1) We're supposed to be encouraging progress and innovation right?
2) Marketing, distribution, manufacturing and outsourcing is supposedly easier nowadays right? ( http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/ )
3) So if you create something that people want, getting them to pay for it ASAP shouldn't be so hard.
Example: the recent Avatar movie did very well - it made 1 billion within one month.
If you need a 95 or 120 year monopoly to make enough money, IMO you should earn a living some other way. It's just bad economics - you are either not good at what you are doing and should do something else, or you are too greedy.
Science & art flourished better w/o copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement. People act as if not paying money to someone for a hundred years will make art and music disappear.
If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a little specious to imply that it was the lack of copyright and patent laws that caused this, no? I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation.
Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig (Score:4, Funny)
sweet so we are in for a boom in achievements in art and science any day now.
Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.
I disagree. The biggest achievements has happened in the last couple of hundred years. However, I also think that there is a huge difference between correlation and causation.
To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement
Agreed.
If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?
Because neo-mercantilist companies and individuals have lobbied to extend it so that they can profit more. And don't expect it to change. With an expected resource crisis due to massive consumption and popultion growth on earth, the mercantalist ideas will just grow strong among those in power.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because corporations never die and they have a lot of money to spend indirectly on political campaigns. Oh, and now they can spend it *directly* on political campaigns. Let the kleptocracy be complete!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Even in modern times there are plenty of examples where copyright appears to have been more or less irrelevent. Typically obscurity is more of a risk that "piracy".
To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement.
Ironically "advancement" is one of the justifications for such laws in the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.
Absolutely! Well, unless you count antibiotics, electricity, computers, quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, the works of Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Johan Strauss, The Beatles, bob Dylan, the steam engine, the aeroplane, the hot air balloon, nuclear fission, recorded and broadcast sound and video, electromagnetism...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up...
Commercial interests are often at odds with the greater good or even common sense... They only make sense in certain areas, and even there need to be controlled to prevent them distorting the market and becoming too powerful...
Look at healthcare, even the US is moving towards non commercial healthcare because the commercial model is simply flawed...
Consider drug research too...
It's simply more profitable to keep someone sick and coming back for continued treatments, there is no incentive to
Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's hoping it's indicative - or will lead to - a groundswell of public opinion.
What us nerds need to do is remind people that copyright is a trade. I've explained to people that Disney nor your favorite band 'deserve' any protection, which they find crazy. But when I explain the idea of copyright is to promote new works by allowing the creative types to make a living - with the understanding that we'll all get it in the end - they start to look at copyright how it was originally intended.
We would still have books and music and art without copyright - people do those for free all the time - but big movies, etc legitimately take a lot of money to make. So I think copyrights are necessary, but drastically limited in length. It's a travesty that the Beatles' work doesn't belong to the world yet, and it's obscene that Mickey Mouse doesn't.
Copyrights were much shorter at the founding of our nation - and that was when a significant portion of the time allotted was used in physically moving stuff around. Now that that's almost instantaneous - or perhaps a few days - it should be shorter than that.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
A creative work is not something naturally owned. It's not a tangible item that you have. Only a social contract allows you to simulate ownership, and to use words like "my", on something as vaporous as a creative work.
The default is for creative works to not be ownable.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas, it's not a trade I make, it's about the state protecting my property.
Awright, fair enough. And since said state is a representative of me, Joe the Voter, what's in it for me?
So let's make a deal. I agree that you get protection from the law w.r.t. your intellectual property, and you agree that after a set amount of time...say 14 years or so, your work goes into the public domain for the betterment of mankind? Deal?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
However, we recognize that certain people have ideas that most people couldn't have by themselves. In general, these ideas are useful to society, so we want these people to keep having them. In order to free these people from the distraction of having to earn a living by conventional means and allow them to spend all of their time coming up with more of their ideas, we create a mechanism by which people can profit from them... A completely artificial concept of imaginary property. We allow these people to be the only ones who may use their idea for profit for enough time to keep checks in their mailbox till they come up with their next idea. After this time passes, the idea reverts to its default state of being available to everyone.
The reality is, when you come up with a creative work, you do the original work of creating it *once.* Most people have to work continuously to earn a continuous living. What gives a creative person the right to earn a perpetual living off of a single act of creation?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas
If you want to protect your ideas, keep them to yourself as secrets. That way, nobody else can use them. Copyright is not about protecting ideas.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage sharing of ideas, so that the whole community can use them. To encourage such sharing, a limited period of exclusive control over use was created by copyright law (it does not exist as a natural right). When that period is over, everyone can use them.
In many jurisdictions, the creator has a perpetual moral right to be iden
Here's one (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time for the "Everyone who had anything to do with creating the mouse is dead now act". It will revert the term on all existing works to the length it was when the work was created. Last I checked, no amount of retroactive incentive can further encourage the dead.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's one (Score:4, Informative)
Your Supreme Court already ruled that any finite duration of copyright is, in fact, constitutional.
Eldred v. Ashcroft [wikipedia.org]
Protect Mickey Mouse with trademarks instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What? Does it make you Grumpy instead of horny?
Copyright should never be extended. (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.
Suppose that copyright is now 50 years. Now supposing that the government thinks that say 100 years is a more optimal time period for copyright. They write a law which changes the time period for copyright law.
Why do the copyright end dates for those works already under copyright change? There is no reason for them to. There is no way that the new law is going to affect whether or not people 50 years ago write more books and music. But clearly the government seems to think that if they keep pushing the date back on existing copyright that they will reach some point where the financial incentive of the new law will convince the Beatles to write another album back in the 1960s. Perhaps they believe that we will soon have time traveling agents, who can inform the artists of the past of their rights.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You keep insisting that the government is "thinking." If it is, it's not thinking about copyright as related to what is good for our society, it is thinking about it in the way that gets senators and representatives re-elected. It's lobbyists that get copyright extended.
Re:Copyright should never be extended. (Score:4, Interesting)
``The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.''
Looking at how things have worked out in practice, it seems the terms have been chosen in such a way as to make copyright simply not expire. Perhaps the reason for that is that those pushing for the extensions are afraid of what will happen if works do go into the public domain. For example, it might then be found out that this actually _promotes_ the arts and sciences. Obviously, they can't have that, because it would wash away all their argumentation for extending the term.
Perhaps, however, the explanation is much simpler: the difference between a work that you hold the copyright for and a work that is in the public domain is that, in the former case, you are in control, and thus in the best position to profit from the work. In fact, you have a monopoly - nobody else is allowed to do certain potentially profitable things without your permission. Given the choice, who wouldn't prefer to keep control over losing it? If someone has an idea that you approve of, you can always grant them the necessary permissions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not an accountant, so I may well be way off here, but maybe it also has to do with not upsetting shareholders with losses on ip.
As long as you have intellectual property, that's an asset on your balance. If you've arbitrarily valued your Steamboat Willy copyright at, say, $50,000,000 USD, that's a sizable loss when the copyright on it expires. A loss that you can avoid by having the copyright term extended. Easy way to keep the shareholders happy, even with property that doesn't actually generate any re
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.
You are far too kind in your analysis. I say that copyright extensions are wholesale theft on such a massive scale that it dwarfs all the piracy that ever has, and ever will happen. When copyright is extended every single piece of work from the minute and arcane to the titans of their genres is stolen from every single member of the public. Compared to all of that, a few billion downloads on the internet is a drop in the ocean.
Easy Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple Solution:
That way, Disney can keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted forever, but anything that isn't generating more than 10k of revenue a year is cheaper to let lapse. Plus, it's another source of revenue for the government.
Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.
It won't even survive Slashdot.
Is that $10,000 per idea? Per character? Per story? Per song? Album? Lyric?
Does Disney have to pay $10,000 to copyright Mickey, and another $10,000 to copyright Steamboat Willie? What about that song he sang during the short?
Not that I'd mind making Disney pay for an infinite amount of $10,000 copyright units... But I'm also curious what I personally can expect to have to pay.
As a software developer (Score:3, Informative)
There are two sides to the argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally supporters of long copyrights have claimed that unless the copyrights were for substantial amounts of time there would be no incentive to create (a similar arguments is made for patents, etc). Well, the other side of it is that if a company is continually reaping revenue from a copyright what's the motivation to create again? Giving people an opportunity to reap a just reward is one thing but ensuring them an entitlement is quite another. Reward is a great motivator but ruin is as well. Innovate or die.
Oddly, that is how we were set up (Score:3, Insightful)
(C) term should be less than avg. human lifetime (Score:3, Interesting)
At the very maximum, "a limited time" should be the average lifespan of a child born at the time the work was created. Today that's 70-odd years.
What's the logic in this you ask?
If I create something you can argue that I and any heirs that are already alive should benefit from it for life, and you could make a weaker argument that direct heirs not yet born have a claim. By heirs I mean people, not organizations. By limiting it to the "average" rather than "actual" lifetime it provides greater certainty as to when copyrights expire.
Personally, I think 70-odd years is too long for complete control, it should be about half of this for complete control for most works, with mandatory licensing at some reasonable scheduled rate after that point for most works, and mandatory licensing at a likely higher rate when new works are used as a minor part of a greater work, such as a song used in a movie, technical documentation or journal publication is copied into a larger work, etc. The devil would be in the details of course.
This is separate from the problem of orphaned works, which is a whole 'nuther ball of wax.
OpenMouse (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who reads The Economist? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Incomplete.
Not at all, the rest of the post is simply behind the Murdoch paywall.
Re:Who reads The Economist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who reads The Economist? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is by far my favorite news publication. It benefits from being a weekly paper, not subject to the constant rush of a daily or hourly news cycle. Their articles tend to be more balanced and more considered, in part I think due to the extra time they have to devote to research and fact-checking.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, they do have an economic/business bias, as would be expected by the title. But even then it tends to avoid a dogmatic approach to most issues (all regulation is 100% bad, etc), and they'll have a reasonable argument when discussing issues of regulation, taxation, monetary policy, etc that doesn't always fall along, say, libertarian policy lines. Yes, they are blatantly pro-capitalism and anti-communism, but balanced to me does not mean equal time for all sides, but rather a rational discussion of the
Re:Who reads The Economist? (Score:5, Insightful)
I never read anything useful in The Economist.
There are a number of reasons for this that I find plausible. Here are two:
1. You are very well-versed on the topics covered by The Economist that you have read. This is very likely true in this specific case, as our community is very sensitive to copyright law and history. The Economist, while targeting a highly educated audience, must sometimes seek common ground even among such heady heights. Copyright is a topic most people have not considered so deeply; so even the brightest of those outside our community are likely to require a more elementary starting point than we.
2. You have read a few articles here and there in The Economist, but have rarely read entire issues. The Economist covers such a broad range of matters -- so many things touch the global economy -- that it is easy to find many articles which are of little use to any given individual. In my case I find the majority of their articles to be, while well researched and written, relatively uninteresting to me. In such a broad space there is bound to be a great deal of chaff relative to each reader's mind.
A possibility that I find extremely implausible is that The Economist is, in fact, utterly lacking in significant content. I say this based on the variety of people I know who find it to be one of the few truly substantial periodicals. Off the top of my head, there's a couple Ivy League grads, a PhD computer scientist, a PhD candidate in some field of biology, and three college drop-outs who are nonetheless among the smartest people I know.
All of which is to say; I can completely understand that you may have found some articles you have read to be shallower than your own knowledge of their topic space (assuming you are fairly astute regarding said space), and others that covered a subject you found inconsequential. I think it is unlikely, however, that the magazine is objectively and entirely mere fluff.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Then again, I have heard it argued that indefinite copyright extensions encourage artists to sit on their laurels instead of creating more.
Re:Most nonsensical argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that much of Disney's stuff is a knockoff of earlier works that are out of copyright, I don't see your point of view as having much validity. Second, this whole "lock it up for eons" mentality has spread beyond copyright - there has been talk of incorporating patents on things like plots or the very subject matter of a given story. This whole ownership thing is WAY out of hand.
Ironically, today's technology offers copyright holders means of distribution (opportunity to make money) that FAR exceed what was available when copyright was first enacted. So to be fair, what do they do...demand longer copyrights? No, they should be feel lucky that the term of a copyright hasn't been reduced. I don't think it was ever the intent of copyright to provide for multi-generational revenue streams.
Re:Most nonsensical argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, a fun and ironic way of handling this issue is extending copyright to 500 years, retroactively. Add a clause that breach of copyright on works where no direct descendent can be found, the infringing party will be subject to a fine equalling 200% of all sales (pre tax) on the items in question AND the infringing work becomes public domain.
At the very least it'd give Disney such a kick in the balls, that they'd shut up about copyright extensions
Re:Most nonsensical argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor. If it's a truly magnificient work of art or at least popular, he will make heaps of money with it, most of which his heirs will inherit.
But why should his heirs or even worse big media conglomerats have any right to something that was created 60 years ago? I sniff a little whiff of feudalism in this line of reasoning.
I can se
Re: (Score:2)
But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright. If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable. And it should only be protected for the minimum ter
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor
Speaking as someone who makes most of his income as a writer, I think you need to look a bit more closely at the economics involved. Publishers generally only look at the first three years of sales when deciding whether it's worth publishing something. This is when most of the profit is made. It's very rare for things more than seven years old to be making a significant income, and these things are generally works that made a massive profit during that time.
Take something like Harry Potter. The first
Super-Nonsensical Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)