Copyright Extension In Australia 258
femto writes "The Motion Picture Association and
APRA have commissioned a
report
from Allen Consulting into the
effects of extending Australian copyright from life+50 years to life+70years.
This forms the MPA and APRA's contribution to
US-Australian free trade negotiations,
currently underway. The report recommends that copyright terms should be extended.
An extension of copyright would not be in Australia's interest.
Some would argue that it is not in anyone's
interest. Projects such as Project Gutenberg of Australia
would be adversely affected by such an extension. Perhaps now is to time to write to your Member
of Parliament, asking them to oppose any extension of copyright or patents, and shore up whatever resistance there is to an extension of IP in Australia?"
Report link (Score:4, Funny)
(For those soon to be unable to reach it, it's basically the template rent-a-stance enumeration of weak arguments against extension, followed by a refutation, followed by an enumeration of arguments for, and supporting arguments for each. Selective focus with input from Allen associate Mr. Straw Man.)
Re:Report link (Score:2, Informative)
Go ahead, I have 6 GB transfer, and it should hold up, or Hostway has explaining to do...
By the way, I hate to be offtopic and all, but if people could visit herrvinny.com, I'm working on an open source voting program. I already have it with the capability to do write in, check multiple choices, instead of just one, etc. Anyone from UW Madison reading this, I'd like to talk to you about field testing this thing. Server edition should be availa
IP Part of Free Trade Agreement (Score:2)
Re:IP Part of Free Trade Agreement (Score:2)
If deputy Sheriff Howard wants to align copyright with anything, wouldn't it be more logical to align it with patents e.g. 20 years?
Bearing in mind the time value of money, this would not significantly affect the Net Present Value i.e. the business case of any project.
It would have the opposite effect of driving innovation in arts in the same way that occurs in engineering/ medicine.
Get over the sherrif thing! (Score:2)
Bush just missunderestimated (sic) the impact that would have on Australia's neighbours. If leaders reacted in the same way every time bush said something stupid then we would have worldwide chaos.
Most people all around the world k
Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL (Score:5, Insightful)
however I cynically suspect that this kind of sensible point of view has absolutely no place in politics these days, especially over anything relating to intellectual property or innovation.
laws are made by companies with money. companies with money have already succeeded. the last thing companies that have succeeded want is innovation.
Re:MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL (Score:3, Interesting)
it should about how absurd life+anything really is.
can't people see that the existence of widespread law breaking from copyright violation is a CLEAR signal that people do not see that the copyright contact is fair? it is so obviously not fair now that people blatantly and purposefully flaunt the laws.
as I put into another post, below. 15 years should be plenty.
Re:MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL (Score:2)
as I put into another post, below. 15 years should be plenty.
Or maybe more radical changes to copyright are needed. Similar to the way in which the "Statute of Anne" fundermentally rewrote the concept.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
1. not respond
2. Make up anything stupid.
As usual. Don't hope too much from these guys.
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
Retrospective extension cannot possibly encourage the creation of something which already exists in the first place. If something already exists then what ever incentives in terms of copyright term which exi
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear Mr Wilkie,
A report has recently been commissioned to discuss the issue of increasing the life of copyright from 50 years after the creator's death to 70 years after the creator's death.
http://www.allenconsult.com.au/resources/M PA_Draft_final.pdf
Leaving my personal views on the actions of major corporate bodies with significant Intellectual Property assets aside for the moment, I would like to make two points.
The first is that copyright is supposed to encourage creation of new material. That's what the artificial structure called copyright is all about. The basic question behind the existence of copyright is "Why would people create something if everyone can just copy it?" Ignoring that people do readily create works for which copyright is applicable, yet still give freely to the public domain, I would just like to say that if any extension is made to the life of copyright I can find no way to justify retrospectively increasing the life of copyright on works that have already been created.
My second point is that the reason for encouraging creation of works is to enrich the public domain, not line the pockets of big business. Government should always be on the side of the public domain and should be constantly striving for ways to bring more material into it, not less. As such, it is my belief that copyright should only exist on a work so long as the copyright owner actively maintains it. The most simple method of encouraging this it to require a token payment be made every, say, ten years to keep the copyright work registered in a central database. The payment need only pay for the upkeep involved in maintaining such a database. The result is that if any copyright work becomes abandoned, it enters the public domain before it becomes worthless.
Please consider these opinions should any relevant vote come before parliament.
Thank you for your time,
Chris Johnson
Your second point is a terrible solution (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish for works to be in the public domain 2 years after the ORIGINAL AUTHOR dies. And that's really it. This would seriously promote new material, as the copyright holders such as corporations would have to bring new things into market as soon as possible in order to make the most money.
But even the 2-year span is too much. The best solution would be that the original a
Re:Your second point is a terrible solution (Score:2)
Re:Your second point is a terrible solution (Score:2)
A token payment is unlikely to help much with "copyright squatting". Far better is a payment which rises exponentially.
Re:Your second point is a terrible solution (Score:2)
What's so special about "author's life plus X" anyway? How did this concept get into copyright law in the first place...
The best solution would be that the original author retains the copyright, but only LICENSES the work to publishers and others to sell and distribute for profit. That way the original author would be able to do whatever he pleases with his OWN work, including revoking a license from a publisher so that n
Re:Your second point is a terrible solution (Score:2)
Why should it be anything like that length of time on a movie or music recording which the publisher will judge "hit" or "miss" in at most a few years? Quite possibly within a few months.
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The report "addresses" this criticism. From the report:
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
IOW, it's only a relatively small theft from the public domain, so don't worry about it.
It's a very sneaky way of trying to make the loss look OK by giving it the value the transferee attaches to it rather than the value the transferor attaches. While the owners may be making a very small gain, the public is losing a considerable right to use old works. Considering the public is the one being asked to give up this advantage, isn't the more relevant point of view that of the public?
Putting it another way,
Re:OFFTOPIC, BUT NEEDS TO BE DISCUSSED (Score:2)
Re:Simpler solution. (Score:2)
Re:Simpler solution. (Score:2)
A century ago plenty of companies were "rigged to take advantage of" horse drawn transport. Indeed the entire economy was tied to this. Even though virtually all of these companies went bankrupt the Western Economy still
commercialisation over the greater good (Score:5, Insightful)
I will certainly be writing to my MP. Unfortunately as it is John Howard this won't make much difference.
Sadly this is another example of policitians putting corporate needs before the greater good. Until corporations can have their leverage over politicians dissolved, this will always be the case.
Re:commercialisation over the greater good (Score:2, Interesting)
Which franchise does Diney gets its most $$$ from? Not Mickey mouse or Donald Duck or any other Disney creation... it's Pooh.
Pooh (Score:3, Informative)
It's partly about whether US video game royalties were included in the agent's contract (Pooh stories were written decades before video games were invented).
I'm not a great fan of the heriditary system anyway - why should you inherit your ancestors book characters (copyright), or wealth (death taxes help) or Presidency/PM (USA, India)? Get a job yourself
Re:commercialisation over the greater good (Score:4, Insightful)
Life+200 years would mean the Grimm brothers familys could collect everything Disney ever made.
If adding 20 years is good, then adding 150 should be even better right?
As an Australian, all I can say is... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no public benefit to having copyright restrictions for such a long period of time.
Well duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Those may be PD already (Score:2)
The Walt Disney Company may have already lost the copyright on Mickey Mouse [asu.edu] due to a faulty copyright notice.
Snopes [snopes.com] seems to think "Happy Birthday to You" is still copyrighted and owned by Time Warner. But it may not be different enough [infoanarchy.org] from an earlier song called "Good Morning to All", whose U.S. copyright has already expired, to be considered a distinct work worthy of a separate copyright.
Re:Those may be PD already (Score:2)
On the other hand, I'd hate to be in court facing Disney's platoon of lawyers in a discussion about infringement...
Re:As an Australian, all I can say is... (Score:2)
I had hoped for better since Mr Luddite^WAlston got promoted sideways.
I guess I didn't expect better, but I had hoped.
Why 20 more years? (Score:2, Funny)
If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit... (Score:4, Insightful)
How much (other than as much as their pockets can fit) money do they really have to make to justify their projects?
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:3, Insightful)
but so long as you have absolute control over something, even if you're not clever enough to do something profitable with it yourself, at least you can stop anyone else trying.
if you can't raise yourself up, then keeping everyone else down is just as good.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2)
In how many cases is the possibility of a 50-70 year long monopoly going to be at all relevent. Even contracts for managment of buildings rarely last that long. A company renting office space or charging bridge tolls has a reasonable chance of continuing inc
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2)
Well, what they're doing right now is taking money from society and distributing it to copyright holders (even if we aren't buying a copyrighted product - like with the tax on blank tapes), and suing people and/or threatening jail time for having certain bit patterns of music data on their hard drive, or just for reading the data they paid fo
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2)
You don't understand how these people think. They don't care how much money can fit in their pockets. They know they can allways buy bigger pockets. That alone is justification enough for them.
Enough ranting. I'll shut up now.
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2)
Very simple: Because big studios have discovered that they can make a lot of money off derivative works, re-releases, remakes and so on. Especially now that they can release digitally enhanced special editions and DVDs. That's a lot of money for not much work. Far more profit that would have been gained from buying a few politicians.
Watch out next year for the feature blockbuster Flowers and Trees vs Steamboat Willie.
Shorter copyrights benefit hidden gems (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an excellent point. Movies which have not already made a large chunk of money in the first life+50 years aren't going to suddenly going to turn into cash cows in the next 20 years after that.
However, there are cases where movies which were never popularized under copyright flourish after the copyrights expire. The classic example of this is, of course, "It's A Wonderful Life [imdb.com]". Al
Re:Shorter copyrights benefit hidden gems (Score:2)
Re:If 50 years isn't enough time to make a profit. (Score:2)
This is a pointless effort. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is a pointless effort. (Score:2)
Re:This is a pointless effort. (Score:2)
in my world... (Score:2)
life of the author plus 50 is already absurd.
how about, say 15 years? That sounds good to me.
10?
Re:in my world... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The owner pays for continual upkeep and maintenance on a pristine "master copy." This mean recopying it, restoring it, digitizing it, or transcribing to new media/formats as necessary to guarantee that a usable copy is available at the end of the copyright term. This also includes storage costs for the Library of Congress (or equivalent body in country where copyright is being extended.)
2. For every year beyond the minimum, compulsory licensing must be made available if there are no publicly purchasable copies of the work. For example, if Vol 1, Issue 9 of Comic X is out of print, and the publisher wants to hold on to the copyright, they must make that material available for sale (ie, via a digital download, on-demand copy, graphic novel or other compendium) or else be subject to compulsory licensing of the work. This ensures that copies of the work are publicly available (even if they have to be extremely expensive.) None of that stop selling for X years to build up demand crap that Disney pulls.
Why these conditions? To make sure that the material is available to the public, and if the owner doesn't want to pay for the master copy (to ensure that the work is accessible after the copyright expires) then the copyright expires right there and then, and if people think it has value, they will copy/distribute it and preserve it that way.
For an example of where this is happening, some copy-protected programs/games from the 80's are no longer available from the original owners (no master copies exist.) The copyright has yet to expire, but even if it did, there are no master copies exist for people to copy and examine. However, there are collectors (ie, pirates) who might have broken the copy protection, archived those copies, and have kept copying them to new media (5 1/4 floppy -> 3.5 floppy -> hard drives -> CD-Roms -> DVD, etc.) This is moot without the hardware to run this stuff, so enter emulators to run the software.
Thus, an item that had value was maintained by the copying of collectors even when the original owner lapsed in their duty to preserve that original. Ironically, this behavior, preservation of a public good (which it would have been, once the copyright lapsed), is illegal under the DMCA. What a way to erase cultural history and hundreds of man-hours of creative work in the name of profit and greed.
Re:in my world... (Score:2)
Re:in my world... (Score:2)
Seriously. If the intent of copyright is to spur the publication of new material, why are we making it so easy to make a living off of milking the same property for all time? Creative material is not a tangible, (assumably) permanent asset like land, and should no
Re:in my world... (Score:2)
Some businesses that have rights to a property will often let the property deteriorate rather than let som
Re:in my world... (Score:3, Interesting)
While I certainly support people's efforts to obtain educations for their children, most artists would not benefit from this. Artists generally don't make a significant amount of money from royalties (which copyrights impact, as opposed to artistic labor such as concerts, or the sale of actual pieces of art as tangible things). Art is just not a money making profession. A few people can become tremendously sucessful as artists -- but the odds of being one of them are on par with winning the lottery. And
Re:in my world... (Score:2)
How about they put the money they make into their kids' college fund? The same way anyone else would do. Ditto for their own pension fund.
Fuck the FTA (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck The Corporate Scumbags and there Free Trade.
Re:Fuck the FTA (Score:2)
Just wondering... (Score:2, Interesting)
Better yet, does anyone know of a comprehensive online listing of which countries have software patents, and what exactly can be patented in each country? I was unable to find such a list, but I'm sure there must be one.
---
Copyright terms should be shortened (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright extension is theft of public property (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Copyright extension is theft of public property (Score:2)
"Why should we waste money paying the police and courts to restrict the distribution of these works long after their creators are dead and gone?"
Re:Copyright extension is theft of public property (Score:2)
Re:Copyright extension is theft of public property (Score:3, Insightful)
The assholes in government are quite prepared to sell off Australia's intellectual property over to global companies in return for an agreed price. The point is that, to them, if someone
A side-effect (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many ways a free-trade agreement would benefit Australia as well. As a largely primary producer, the subsidies the US government give its wheat producers price Australia out of the market. No-one has managed to convince me either way that such an agreement would work out better or worse for Australia. I certainly can't see any benefit for the US. Obviously, things will change (some for better and some for worse) for both parties. But is it truly worthwhile for either?
Re:A side-effect (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A side-effect (Score:2)
Australia competes on world wheat markets without a subsidy. Can the US say the same ?
Anyone read dictionary.com's def of copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
Check this [reference.com] out.
Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is actually immoral, unethical, and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths.
Who the hell wrote that? Well, it's better than the RIAA's version. Interesting :-)
What happens to expired content? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seem bizarre to me that something could enter the public domain and then leave it again.
Can someone enlighten me (Score:3, Interesting)
Good question (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is a utilitarian one: Human progress happens by building on the fringes of what we have now. If what we have now is locked up indefinitely, progress will effectively stop due to the cost of determining who owns what already exists.
Think about this for a moment. How much would your computer cost if, for every component in it, you had to pay a royalty to the descendents of Faraday, Telsa, Volta, Planck, Boole, Turing, Babbage and so on for everyone who discovered something crucial to its operation?
Re:Good question (Score:2)
Canonical anti-perpetual-IP comment (Score:2)
Would you want to be paying royalties to the descendants of the caveman who invented the wheel?
Re:Can someone enlighten me (Score:2)
Once you release it, it now becomes a burden on society to forever force people not to reproduce the words, sounds, images, or physical constructs that they would naturally want to do and be able to do.
Second, in this day and age, nothing truly useful is developed from scratch. If you are a good author, artist, or musician, you learned from others that went before you. As a
Re:Can someone enlighten me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can someone enlighten me (Score:3)
You write a successful book, your children can potentially live off the income from that book, while doing nothing themselves to help society in any way.
But if you build a bridge that allows millions of people to travel more easily between two locations, increasing trade and generally giving value to society, then you get paid once for your work. Nothing for your kids, nothing for the grandkids.
But maybe I'
Re:Can someone enlighten me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Can someone enlighten me (Score:2)
I could just turn around your question and ask:
"Why should the descendants of someone reap in royalties forever for something one of their ancestors happened to create?"
Copyright have been created to make it possible for artists and authors to make some money off their work and thus encourage more work to be done.
If copyright is extended over the life of the author for some really important work, the author and his descendants have no need to do any
That's right (Score:5, Informative)
If nothing else, it further entagles us with the lunatic foreign policy of the US.
But of course the bad news doesn't stop there. Health care, local media content, copyright law, drug law, terrorist law, foreign ownership,
For those who are interested, the ISO is holding a social forum this weekend, and will be discussing just such issues, and many more. It starts tonight ( 7pm ) and goes until Sunday. It's at UTS. See http://www.sydneysocialforum.org [sydneysocialforum.org] for more details. Honestly, this is the best place to discuss the issues involving the FTA, and build resistance groups to lobby the government. See you there!
Write to your local MP (Score:2, Interesting)
of the current government, albeit a mere backbencher at the moment.
Here is hoping he doesn't tow the party line should they choose to tow
the corporate American line.
I just finished reading the report... (Score:3, Insightful)
...it's actually surprisingly understandable.
It's also surprisingly balanced. Their conclusion is that the benefits and costs of copyright term extension approximately balance each other, and hence harmonisation arguments result in a net gain for extending the term.
I noticed that they, like most pro-copyright-term-extension reports, miss out on one crucial thing, and that's that they do not acknowledge that thanks to modern technology, there is a burgeoning "public domain industry" which consists of real stakeholders whose interests are directly in opposition with the existing copyright holders on this issue.
Moreover, this industry is making a real foothold in Australia. I own a number of Australian-produced DVDs of 1930s era animated shorts, for example.
People writing to their MPs might like to point this out. A copyright term extension would effectively kill a new Australian industry.
Elect me and I will fight against copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
I also don't believe in this "War on terrorism" we have enjoined with the United States. I see it as nothing more than a global land grab for US oil and gas interests. Read "Rebuilding America's Defenses" if you don't believe me (http://www.newamericancentury.org/).
Ironically it has taken the "war" to get me interested enough in where we are potentially headed to actually decide that if I can't change those IN power, I better get my voice heard by being in government myself.
So to this end I am interested in hearing from fellow Aussies (and others if you want to make your view known) on whether or not you want to support a future Senate candidate who is a geek at heart, and who plans to have a party based online with forums where everyone can make their voice heard. You've all heard that sending email to politicians is useless; well my view is that email and forums such as this are the BEST way to make issues known to those in politics (well, those that really care, anyway). It will allow me to disseminate my ideas and allow for consensus based policy making.
Anyone who wishes to help by donating a small amount of server space and forum expertise to set up a fledgling party page, please contact me at quizo_NOSPAM_69@hotmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
As we have learned from Pauline Hanson's screwups, I would need 500 registered party members to make this a legitimate endeavour, in time to run for the 2004 Federal Election. I'm not kidding myself though - as a lone Senator I would not be in much position to formulate national policy and have it succeed constantly, but I would be a tech savvy person who would vote down stupid laws that take away our privacy, and give $$$ to corporations at the expense of the citizenry.
Oh, and instead of a fridge magnet, I'd give everyone a CD with free software such as OpenOffice.org etc, and mandate that government use open standards to deal with the public.
Anyway, if anyone thinks they would like someone in office who is not a politician by nature (I'm a pilot by profession) then drop a comment here or email me (bear in mind Hotmail will die silently after the inbox fills so posting here is preferred!). If there's enough interest I'll begin the process of running for parliament next year.
I don't want to make this post too long so read my other posts for more insight into how I view the world.
Quizo69
Re:Elect me and I will fight against copyright (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, the idea of a "Liberal Geek" party is a great one, and though it would be difficult to get any real support, it might well be worth a try.
Obviously, you realise that running as a true independent is a long shot to succeed, and hence the idea to form a party. However, a suggestion: if you want to form a party, don't form it around the basis that you'll be the one running for the Senate. A truly democratic and open party can be founded by you, sure, but the members might want someone else among their
You are correct (Score:2)
I concur, and yes, I'm small "L" liberal (Score:2)
The reason I have asked for server space is so that I can give you my views on the other major issues. Rest assured I have them
One of the issues I intend to cover is just what you say - the inability of the smaller parties to have any effect in parliament.
Thanks for the comments, and watch this space.
Quizo69
Re:Elect me and I will fight against copyright (Score:2)
My proper email address (Score:2)
politics@leeming_NOSPAM_designs com
Please send emails to this address please. I've already had a tentative offer of server support (thanks), but please keep them coming if you feel you can contribute in any way.
Once I get some space that isn't going to melt under a potential Slashdotti
I don't care what you think (Score:2)
Tell me what copyright holders think about this. Really. They have a stake in this too but I never see their points of view written about.
Re:I don't care what you think (Score:2)
Re:Any Software Developers in the House? (Score:2)
I'm a software developer myself, and although I'm proud of the coding I do, it is simply not expressive art to the degree of that produced by a song writer or story author.
Now when we get to patenting algorithms and methods, we're a bit closer. :(
Melancholy Elephants (Score:2)
Copyright terms should be getting shorter (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, we live in a world where near-instant capitalization is possible. A popular writer can sell millions of copies in the first week of a book's release. An unknown writer of exceptional quality can become well known in a few months. Similar scenarios exist with all other forms of media. A typical hollywood blockbuster makes several hundred percent profit in a theatrical release cycle alone. As a result, most of the capitalization occurs within a few years of a work's publishing and then quickly tapers off to a relatively insignificant level.
So the question becomes: Why are copyright terms getting longer and not shorter? The vast majority of the incentive to produce occurs in the first couple years of release. After that period, one must reasonably weigh the pros and cons of allowing that term to continue. Because copyright law is a social compromise, it must be judged by its value to society as a whole. Does allowing a term to continue into years of greatly diminished sales give enough extra incentive to authors to outweigh the costs to society of the work not entering the public domain?
There are many possible factors to consider. On one hand, very prolific authors can retire earlier on the combined trickle income from the remnant sales of numerous old works. This could be seen as an added incentive to become an author. However, at the same time, it is an incentive to stop producing earlier! On one hand, a longer term allows for certain works to go through several revisions by the original authors. But at the same time, there is no longer an incentive for others to produce derivative works of what would have been public domain material! Disney is, of course, the most classic case.. They make big money on reworking the public domain but then don't want their derivatives to ever go public domain again!
Perhaps one of the largest factors is simply the shortage of modern public domain material. Besides removing the incentive to innovate on old material, this shortage creates a gap of cultural heritage. Consider music: when people go looking for music, they generally support the artists that are currently in style and/or innovative. Most are unwilling to pay for old music, not just because it is less popular, but because they can't afford both. (and after all, why would you "support" someone who's already dead?) And yet there has been a recent resurgence in the popularity of "oldies" music in youth. It is now common to hear parents saying things like, "Hey, I didn't know you kids actually listened to that stuff! That's older than I am!" Casual investigation reveals that unauthorized P2P swapping has largely replaced the functionality that public domain was intended to serve!
By and large, there is great need for copyright length reform. What was once intended to create vibrant culture of quality, public information has become a system that often chokes innovation and rewards greed and slothfulness. Copyright is a good social institution, but its implementation has been greatly corrupted. It is high time for citizens to petition their lawmakers bring reason, fairness, and the public good back into the picture.
This post is public domain. Do with it as you please.
copyright maintainance fee (Score:2)
I think you could take that one step further and simply charge an annual copyright maintainance fee which should increase exponentially with the age of the copyright. Any entity could hold a copyright for as long as it wants, so long as they continue to pay the annual fee. A reasonable formula might be:
fee = $(1.18)^(years
Of course it's in someone's interest (Score:2)
could someone... (Score:2)
I mean, one good reason beyond wealth inheritance.
My two pence (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what I would do if I was drafting a brand new copyright law:
Default term of copyright
Copyright should run for five years after the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years after publication if no royalties are ever paid. If you can't make any money out of it in five years, then face it - you're probably never going to.
Extension to five year term
Extensions would be granted by court order and charged at five times the national median annual wage for the first six months, doubling the multiplying factor and recalculating the median wage for each additional six months thereafter. The onus would be upon the copyright holder to demonstrate why the work should not enter the public domain immediately.
Prevention of abuse of copy-prevention measures
If any technological measures are used to prevent unauthorised copying, then at least one unencumbered copy must be placed in escrow with the national library or a similar organisation in order that the work should be able to enter the public domain upon expiry of copyright. Failure to provide such an unencumbered copy would be grounds for termination of copyright. In such event, any penalty for attempting to circumvent copy-prevention would not be applicable in the case of such a work: it is in the public domain and the public has a statutory right to access it, using reasonable force if necessary. That the techniques used might be {illegally but successfully} applicable against other copy-prevented works should serve as a strong disincentive against "snake oil" merchants.
And finally, the bit I think is really the most important: Protection of works in the Public Domain.
Once a work has entered the public domain, whether by the expiration of copyright, by consent of the copyright holder or by court order, it would be legally protected against any attempt to re-copyright it. Exactly the same provision would be made for the fair use of PD material in copyright works as for the fair use of copyright material, except that nobody would be entitled to grant permission over and above what constitutes fair use.
It's harsh, but so was the Thirteenth Amendment. We moved out of the age of muscle power and into the age of engine power; thanks to James Watt, there was no longer any even remotely legitimate reason to allow people to be kept as slaves. Now we have moved out of the Age of Scarcity and into the Age of Plenty, and the law needs to change to recognise that -- not to create artificial scarcity.
the reasons for this (Score:2)
1.without long copyright terms, a lot more "current" stuff comes out of copyright sooner (and therefore there is less incentive to go see the latest blockbuster or buy the latest hit game or whatever because they can get the older stuff for free AND do it legally)
2.if it falls out of copyright sooner, the right to make "derived works" (for example, yet another sequal for or even just joe random movie that happens to use the same chara
Something I would like to see (Score:2)
i.e. if I want a particular copyrighted work (e.g. a song), the copyright holder must make it available in a usable form. (obviously a fee can be charged for this)
For example, songs must be on casette tapes or CDs or something.
Movies on VHS or DVD.
TV shows on VHS or DVD or something.
Books would be made available either as hard-copy books or as electronic books.
Software would be tricky (for example, what happens if someone makes a request fo
Re:Interesting analysis by ACLU (Score:5, Funny)
CB
Re:|"Intellectual property" in Australia? (Score:2)
If you want to expand your Oz music horizons - look up any of the following:
Screamfeeder; Beautiful Girls; The Living End; You Am I; Resin Dogs; Something For Kate; Magic Dirt; Gerling; Nick Cave; Butterfly Effect; Grinspoon; Powderfinger; Biftek; The Fergussons; Andromeda; The Superjesus; Frenzal Rhomb;