The Case For Perpetual Copyright 547
Several readers sent in a link to an op-ed in the NYTimes by novelist Mark Halprin, who lays out the argument for what amounts to perpetual copyright. He says that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property: "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." This community can surely supply a plethora of arguments for the public domain, words which don't appear in the op-ed. In a similar vein, reader benesch sends us to the BBC for a tale of aging pop performers (virtually) serenading Parliament in favor of extending copyright for recording artists in the UK. Some performers are likely to outlive the current protections, now fixed at a mere 50 years.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
what are you wacked? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Informative)
This guy is known to write biting satire... Either that article is a fine example, or its one of the worst reasoned essays I've ever read.
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Re:what are you wacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
With perpetual copyrights, we would have perpetual heritage disputes (who owns the works of Aristotle these days?), and all important works locked away. This is just stupid.
Request for Payment to Mr Halprin (Score:4, Interesting)
In light of a rumored bill before Congress to retroactively extend the limited copyright in the US to 25000 years after the death of the author (or the destruction of the last copy of the work, whichever comes last), we are investigating several potential copyright infringements in your last op-ed entitled "A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright?".
Descendants of James Madison request to be compensated for any citation, partial or full, of any of his works. Descendants of Hammurabi (currently estimated at about 127 million) claim copyright on any western law text and discussion thereof, as they are all derivative works of Hammurabi's Code of Law. Finally, there have been claims by descendants of Evander, son of the Sybil, that all Roman letters fall under their copyright, and that therefore any text using them needs to pay them a fair share of proceeds.
Preliminary calculations put the projected statutory infringement fines at 4.2 trillion dollars. This number may change as more claimants come forward. As it is unknown how much more the US Congress is going to extend copyrights, we suggest to settle sooner rather than later.
Sincerely,
Howard Howe,
Dewey, Chetham & Howe, LLP
Please reprint and distribute freely.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perpetual copyrights are today's equivalent to burning down the Library at Alexandria.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:4, Funny)
No one was landing on the moon back then, and there was no Interweb.
Since burning the Great Library resulted in all this progress, we should immediately implement perpetual copyrights. Q.E.D.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is not that we landed on the moon - the point is where would we be in the astronomers of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and India had been able to work together since the beginning.
Instead we have entire continents that went to fire and sword as one empire after another fell. With them fell their knowledge, their science, and their arts. Perpetual copyright is tanamount to having the most beautiful spouse in the world... but being unable to touch them or speak to them.
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Oh, so you've met my girlfriend?
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they could, but only at the expense of giving up their claimed "moral high ground"...
Not that I think it is the moral high ground in any case...
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biOFnAlXrV8 [youtube.com]
UFO Potcake Film! Check it out!
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to keep control of an idea, don't tell anyone about it. Nothing the government can do will keep people from imagining that Harry Potter had one more adventure. Eventually an idea will grow beyond control no matter how strong the copyright laws are.
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If all copyrights fell back to a BSD style license after some time frame, say 20 years, and started out by default to be a BSD style license then I agree.
Of course by BSD style, I mean you always have to give credit to the original author (Not to a university, or some RIAA that bought the rights.)
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to share freely, don't do it at all. You're not a special and unique person, and you have nothing earth shattering to say that would justify participating in a system that restricts access to information and culture based on money for no justifiable reason whatsoever.
If you have so little passion for what you think and so little pride in what you create that you would prefer not to share it with the rest of us unless you are bribed to do so, then I would suggest you go get a job at MacDonalds and spend you free time on the beach working on your tan.
You're just contributing to the ever growing pile of soulless trite commercially driven crap that dulls the mind and obscures the work that has merit anyways. We won't miss you.
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
Note too that the artist with the perpetual copyright would in fact need to pay a fee to the manufacturer of the paint he or she used. After all, the work that the paint company went through to create the paint needs to be recognized.
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I do some work, I get paid for it once and that's that. What's so special about artistic work that means artists should get paid again and again and again for the same bit of work?No, of course not. He has the right to sell the paintings he paints, and his descendants have the right to sell any paintings he didn't sell in his lifetime. Just as an author has a right to sell the stories he writes. Just as a builder has a right to sell the houses he builds. That's all perfectly fair.
However, I don't believe a painter's descendants have a right to demand money every time someone looks at one of his paintings, and I don't believe an author has a right to demand money every time someone reads a story he wrote. They can make money by doing work and then selling it. If they then want to make more money, they can do more work, just like everybody else has to.And they manage to make a living just fine without perpetual copyrights, so what's the problem?Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
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Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
The argument isn't that a child has the RIGHT to earn money from their parents' work, but rather the inverse: A parent strives to provide for their children, and thus an artistic parent would strive to create more valuable art in order to provide more revenue from that art to his/her children.
Note: I'm not saying I agree with this reasoning, but when you look at it from the perspective of the parent, there is some sense to it, as a reward for the artist.
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And they can do this by selling their creations and saving the money - just like the rest of us.
Or even better, they can pass a work onto their children for them to sell later, as many things get more valuable after the creator is dead. Even better, they could leave a secret cache of their second-rate work and rough drafts to enrich their descendants - imagine a new work from Pic
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know, would you deny a plumber the right to make money every time you use your faucet or toilet, or would you want to pay an architect every time you opened your door to your house? How about "his" family after he's dead? Anyone can be an artist or writer and there is no certification or even skill required to produce it so why we would treat what would appear to be the least qualified people as though they were better than truly skilled and certified artisans is beyond me.
This seems akin to how our society is obsessed with completely defying natural selection by making sure we warn the idiots and retards of society that it's not wise to bring a plugged-in toaster into the shower with you; it's little more than making it easier for the idiots, whose only valuable contribution to society might be one single work of art, to live a long and comfortable enough life to breed and produce even more idiots. Real artists who want to make money should have to work, like the rest of us, to reap "repeating" benefits and their families can reap them IF the artist was wise enough to invest it for them. If they can't produce enough good art to survive then maybe they're not cut out to be an artist.
What such a thing would encourage would be our entire society to give up any education in hopes of making one single piece of art, visual or auditory, that will actually sell decently so they can live as though they are entitled to a comfortable living because of that single work, making our society even dumber than it already is. What we call an IQ of 80 would soon be our 120.
Think about how stupid the average person is and then realize that half the population is even dumber than that. --George Carlin.
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I own a car, do your honestly think I would give a crap if you made an identical copy of it and drove away in it.
I bake a
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It's got nothing to do with a US copyright standard - it's the Berne Convention. Signatories are not permitted to place barriers to 'implicit' copyright on works by authors/artists from other countries - this even extends to prohibiting the old copyright notice requirement (© such-and-such 2007). Theoretically, the US could require local artists/authors to register copyright,
Artists Have No Right to Permanent Copyright (Score:3, Funny)
Don't they...?
There is no intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:5, Interesting)
"If I have an apple and and you have an apple and we swap we will each have one apple. If I have an idea and you have an idea and we swap we now each have two ideas."
Surely this is how intellectual "property" should work.
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:4, Interesting)
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If someone makes a product from my idea
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, when you create something and share it, you've given up your exclusive right to it. It "belongs" to society, simply because locking it up requires an unnatural effort to prevent an idea (or information) from being expressed. That's why physical property and intellectual property are just naturally different things. As I said, I'm willing to tolerate an artificial "lending" of that property back to its creator long enough to create an economic incentive to create, but the laws as they stand now are ridiculously imbalanced.
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know the best solution to this situation. Clearly we want to reward people to create patterns for a living: writers, musicians, filmmakers. Just as clearly, doing so using the same mechanisms as physical property is no longer workable. (It was, at one point in the past: an author traded his book to a publisher for money, who then had the exclusive license to print physical copies. That no longer holds in a world where such things are sold electronically.)
Like I said, I don't have any solutions. I do know that I find the attitude that "if I can copy it I should be able to" (which I see a fair bit of on Slashdot) rather self-serving: people are taking their newfound ability to copy music, movies, etc. and objecting to any attempt to limit it as if they were entirely entitled to it. The sellers are still working under an old paradigm, and it's unfair to tell them that they're the losers until somebody manages to come up with a new paradigm.
I'd be less upset if Slashdotters showed any interest in coming up with that new paradigm. Instead, the attitude seems to be, "Hey, free music/movies/etc!". Tremendous effort is put into breaking any new copy protection (which, I concur, will be ultimately futile) and none into suggesting a new business model.
(Well, there's the ever popular "musicians should play more concerts" model. If I ever meet such a person in person, I shall ask them if they've ever tried to play concerts professionally, and if they haven't I shall spit in their faces.)
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Yes, exactly. DRM and DMCA: both are attempts to create an artificial scarcity in the face of a technology that reduces the costs of distribution to near zero. Good point.
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Don't forget his other flaw. (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and skip paying the property taxes (unless you're a church) and see how long it takes the government to take those away.
If you want to treat "intellectual property" the same as physical property, then let's start with taxing it. Even if it doesn't make a profit for you. If you've released it, it goes into Public Domain unless you keep paying the taxes on it.
I actually believe that this would be the best "middle ground" between the the two sides. 99.999% of the stuff published would NOT be valuable enough to keep paying taxes on, year after year after year. Say $5 per item (single song, single story, single program, etc).
The items that ARE that valuable are so valuable that the owners (not necessarily the original producers of the work) can BUY legislation that extends copyright indefinitely for EVERYTHING. Even the 99.999% of stuff that isn't worth it.
I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this one of the ways a culture can commit suicide?
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike physical property, "intellectual property" actually infringes upon others' right to think.
Imagine the future. It is clear that some day, maybe soon or maybe distant, we will know how to interface computers directly with the mind. We will quite literally expand our own minds. What is the difference between a book stored in your digital memory and a book stored in someone's birth-given photographic memory? What is the difference between DRM in a computer and DRM in a mind? How can you have preemptive systems that stop the transfer of information without affecting the computers connected to our brains? This is, literally, the path to third-party mind control.
Are we going to have "intellectual" laws that make it illegal to remember something for too long, or too precisely? Will we have laws that make it illegal to communicate something you know? Because, at its base, this is what intellectual property is. It will become more and more evident as humans gain physical control over their own minds.
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Add to all that that genetic sequences have been patented already... just wait until someone is executed for patent violation...
I do wonder what the next culture will be like... and how long it'll take until it reaches this point again...
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Here there are extensive rigths for everyone to roam the countryside. Property-rigths are what a society decides that they should be. Anyone not happy with the set of rigths they get if they purchase, say a Norwegian forest, are free not to buy one, so any arguments along the lines that it's "unfair" are pretty pathethic if you ask me.
Anyone can (in the countryside)
So much insanity in that article I don't know wher (Score:3, Insightful)
"Freeing" a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, "The Garden Party," while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.
Has this guy heard of the internet? Where anyone can 'publish' for almost no cost.
Re:So much insanity in that article I don't know w (Score:3, Insightful)
The insanity starts where it usually does; the Mr. Helprin confuses a monopoly with property (which, of course, is the entire point of calling it intellectual 'property').
What if the maker of the chair had the perpetual monopoly right? Nobody else would be allowed to make chairs. What if the maker of the house had a perpetual monopoly on building houses? Well, Mr Helprin wouldn't have a problem with the government taking his house when he died; h
Re:So much insanity in that article I don't know w (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I'm in favour of the public domain, and in favour of it sooner rather than later. When your idea, or you implementation, or your song, or your algorithm, or your sheet music go into the public domain, it fosters innovation. The short-term monopoly you are given fosters the actual creation, but when it enters the public domain the real innovation hits. Look, for instance, how hiphop artists are sampling old public domain records. Look at code that's free to be changed. The examples are endless.
But at the end of the day the real challenge is not people extending copyright and treating patents like warheads and trademarking the "Apple". The real challenge is, instead, educating the masses why what you create isn't yours naturally. It's ours. It's the way it's always been: what humanity creates belongs to humanity. You can try to stop it, of course. But you'll fail.
Re:So much insanity in that article I don't know w (Score:2)
I had a discussion a
People should be paid but.... (Score:2)
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Also, even if copyrights were perpetual, it is very likely that descendants would eventually get rid or forget about their rights to their ancestors's work.
IMO, life (up to the last living actor/director/writer/etc. involved in a team production) + 25 years should be plenty su
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I don't really see how. At least in McCartney's case. Lennon can't "own" anything at the moment.
I think that copyright should end when the creator expires. When they can no longer benefit from their work then the work should enter the public domain.
However, as an artist and software developer
Re:People should be paid but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they still have unlimited time to 'commercially exploit their material'. The limit is only on the time that the ability is solely theirs.
When the copyright expires on Madonna's stupid Bananas song, she doesn't lose the ability to make money from it. She can still sing in it concerts, sell CDs/MP3s/whatever, and anything else she wants. Others will be able to sell CDs/MP3s of it, but they will still be completely unable to BE her and sing it live in concert.
And for her to stop making money on the CDs requires the assumption that nobody will pay for the official CD. Collectors, fans, and others who simply enjoy the music will continue to buy the original to support the artist.
What removing lengthy copyrights DOES do it remove the bullshit from the system. No more price-gouging for CDs. They can't pay the artist $.07 a song and sell them for $1.30 anymore. They'll have to actually have reasonable rates because someone else WILL sell it for a reasonable rate.
(My apologies to those of you who actually like the Bananas song. All 3 of you.)
Copyright is Public Protection (Score:5, Insightful)
So society promised authors/creators/artist a limited time monopoly as incentive and society gets the benefit of the artwork/creation and later having it in public domain.
Don't forget, having copyright in the first place causes a strain on society. IP is not a natural right. Copyright is a mutually beneficial contract between creators and society. The article's author wants to subvert the contract completely in the favor of one side. In U.S. contract law, for contracts to be valid, both sides have to have had a clear benefit for the contract to be considered valid.
Copyright already has been subverted to the one side so often (copyright extensions) without any clear benefits given for the other side, I would have to start arguing that the contract is not valid anymore. I don't believe anybody is owed rights that place an undue burden on society unless society also benefits in some way. This is not the case here.
If you want your thing protected forever, lock it in a vault, don't let it see the light of day, and don't tell anybody about it. Let it die, along with you eventually.
Re:Copyright is Public Protection (Score:5, Insightful)
What everyone is forgetting is that society agrees to enforce copyright but it has costs. I agree to let you and only you sell your work (without taking it, just copying it or doing whatever I would wish with it) because then you have an incentive but there is no reason for me to spend lots of resources to ensure that you keep all the gain if there is no give back.
The cost on enforcing copyright is paid for by society with the idea that it gains. If there is no gain, why spend enormous resources protecting copyright?
Copyright is not some inherent right and I keep thinking everyone keeps forgetting this.
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I had to stop and think about whether this statement referred to the article or the summary. From the summary:
I resent the implication that the only alternative to a copyright extension is an outright abolishment of copyright. The biggest piece of common sense I've heard for ages on the subject of copyright reform was from the Gowers
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Disney finds out about the guy and then sues the guy into oblivion (mickey mouse pancakes sold at any disney theme park)
as it is currently any time you sell or distribute anything that comes close to some companies "iP" you will get sued
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After all didn't Newton say " If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
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Why is this a problem? He found a business model that worked, and we have his works today. If anything, that example demonstrates that copyright is *not* necessary for great artistic works to be created and published.
Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange, in his article Helprin doesn't mention anything about HIM paying royalties to Shakespeare's descendants for his use of the title Winter's Tale [wikipedia.org] for his novel (it is the name of, and a reference to a Shakespeare play). Presumably he should cough up something for the use of a similar plot device too.
No mention either of what he should be paying the descendants of every innovator in printing technology.
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Also, as you state it, one could understand it as if the bible was the source of those moral themes, and not only a fairly known and old writing concerning ethics.
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-The Republic
-Books by John Locke
-Karl Marx
-John Stuart Mill
-Adam Smith
-Immanuel Kant
-Niccolò Machiavelli
-George Orwell
Since cultures are melding modern western writing is also influenced by all the various religions and writing from other cultures. Buddhism is a good example and one not based on the bible in any way.
Furthermore god did not write the bible thus it is the jewish people who are
Re:Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
The author is making a philosophical argument, not a legal one. So the fact that titles happen, currently, not to be copyrightable is irrelevant. If you follow the author's reasoning, then every idea under the sun ought to be indefinitely copyrightable, whether it be a book, a song, a title, a slogan, a recipe, or the barest concept. After all, what is the moral justification for protecting the livelihood of an author and not that of a slogan-maker? Besides which, titles and slogans can to some extent be trademarked [uspto.gov] if defined as part of a brand (e.g. Conan(TM)the Barbarian) and perpetually with the proper forms and fees.
I suppose under this argument, fair use is likewise an abomination. Why should critics and satirists be allowed an easement over property they can just as easily avoid?
In history (Score:2, Interesting)
But the English Alphabet, or the direct ancestors, there is an argument which theory applies.
Anyway, I w
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While it is still technically an 'ad hominem' attack, It pertains to the matter at hand.
Now, whether of not using a title and idea of another writer is actually against copy
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Ad hominem, in my understanding, would have been to claim the author has smelly feet or gave his fiancee a blood diamond, or some equally irrelevant argument.
Authors (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously there are exceptions, people like Neil Stephenson have certainly embraced the future (well more like the present).
This never made any sense to me either (Score:2)
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Compare this to a novelist, who often spends YEARS of his life on a single novel. Can't exactly sell out football stadiums full of
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You could write a novel or an instructional booklet and release the entire thing online for free in HTML format and use adwords on the site that hosts it. You don't need to "sell a single copy". Just put it up, set up an adwords account and then spend a bit of time promoting / advertising it. If it's any good and people like it then the
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two words: "Property Taxes" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:two words: "Property Taxes" (Score:5, Interesting)
The right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright only exists because technology made it relatively simple to replicate a work and sell it many times over.
Sure, why not? (Score:2)
geesh.
The funny thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
... so-called "intellectual property" already is far more protected than real property.
A few years ago I decided to play devil's advocate in a discussion about copyright and promoted the concept of "permanent copyright" in which the material never passed into the public domain. It was a fascinating thing to try to promote, because quite rapidly it becomes clear that the permanent copyright is simply untenable.
20 years' copyright protection is enough. I'm not an author or an artist, and like most people I get paid for today's work once rather than getting paid over and over and over for the rest of my life. The position that someone should work once and get paid perpetually for doing so is not workable.
no good case for degrading the spirit and mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind
I agree entirely, there is no good reason to put physical limitations on ideas and doing so degrades them. Good ideas can be immortal, a story is retold, a song is sung, inventions are shared and implemented long after the death of the person who conceived the original. As one candle lights another, ideas flow between people and enrich all. A society that would put unreasonable restrictions on these things will extinguish them. The ultimate reward for any author is recognition and imitation.
Perpetual copyrights will be used to crush people with new stories, songs and ideas. "What is yours next to our collection, which [contains tens of thousands | spans the entire history of recorded music | includes the work of Einstein]?" they can ask before dismissing you. Every day we come closer to losing the right to read [gnu.org].
Give and take (Score:2)
(anyone on
The correct answer to these problems is to refine copyrigh
Sure, but no restrictions on "license" then (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if someone tries to sell you a horse that you can ONLY ride on your lawn you call that person nuts.
Same term (Score:2)
You know, you're right. Reduce the composer's copyright to 50 years as well.
Also, this is akin to me turning round to an ex employer and saying "you're still using that script I wrote, pay me more money for doing that". It's a bullshit argument, they've had 50 years to rake it in and that should be enough.
Owning culture (Score:2)
Retroactive copyright extensions (Score:2)
It's a bargain, not a right (Score:2)
But what about the commons? (Score:2)
And it's not all Disney with Pinnochio. Every author does this. Think: Love Triangle. Fish out of Water. Coming of Age. Ticking Time Bomb. Quest.
Creativity is not something that springs, like Athena, from the brows of authors. It's more like a conversation they have with the public imagination.
People who want a strong grounding on these issues should read Macaulay's Second Speech on Copyright Extension to
No property rights are forever (Score:2)
The King of England once owned the land now called the US of A.
Intellectual property is harder to protect and defend, and stand to be lost easier.
What body should protect the copyright of Publius Vergilius Maro? The roman empire?
No law can change this.
I guess IQs DID drop sharply while I was away ... (Score:2)
The guy is either ignorant or self-serving (or both), and frankly I don't like either.
Greed is unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The copyright is already too long by about 50 years (in the US). I can imagine detailed arguments over the fine details, but 10-20 years is the right range. And corporations should not be allowed to own copyrights, only to license them from the owners for a limited period of time. Also copyrights should die immediately when the owner of the copyright dies. Families don't have any respect for the artistic integrity of the works of authors, so why should they be allowed to control it. (Sometimes I don't like what an author does, and prefer an earlier version of his work, but I respect his right to alter it. I don't respect the grant of that right to the works of dead authors for people who don't bother to read and understand the original. Here I'm thinking of Eric Flint and the incongruous prequels to the Dune series. E.E. Smith, OTOH, did have the right to write "Skylark DuQuesne", however much it mutilated the world of the previous Skylark books.)
I will grant that this will mean that families won't be able to protect the integrity of the works of their ancestors. They don't anyway. They usually don't appear to even understand them. (Christopher Tolkien may understand, but he's not the writer his father was.)
Also, neither Cinderella nor "The Beauty and the Beast" were Walt Disney originals. Finding the original sources, however, has become a challenge. Or try a somewhat tougher one: What were the traditional words and tune to "Geordie" (not the Joan Baez version). The indefinitely extended copyright has caused it to be VERY dangerous to attempt to create music on a traditional basis. Somebody is likely to have copyrighted a part of any variation of it that you can make (which also sounds good). Actually, they're quite likely to have copyrighted the traditional version as their own. Proving this, however, is difficult. A copyright that expires in a reasonable amount of time minimizes this problem (and it's quite reasonable that ressurecting a traditional favorite DOES deserve SOME reward...but not an unending copyright.)
Why should artists get paid in perpetuity? (Score:3, Insightful)
So again - why do some artists think they ought to do work once, then collect checks in perpetuity? I have an answer for that, but I would love to hear from someone who thinks it doesn't involve "cheap lazy selfish narcissistic assholes who don't understand that their work is not nearly as original as they think it is."
taxes on death? (Score:2)
When you transfer assets to your heirs you have to pay a fairly hefty tax, usually in the 10% magnitude. Same for other forms of property tax. And note that these taxes are on the value of the property, not on the revenue you generate with it.
It could be that equating copyright with property might benefit the IRS the most, and make that perpetual copyright might not be worthwhile because of tax pressure except for the 0.001% of all-time classics.
As a published writer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm inclined to suspect that this is a trial balloon floated by the big publishers & Disney-oids to complete the rape of the pubic domain. How long before things like Shakespeare, the Illiad, the Bible, Darwin's work are auctioned off to big money (in return for big campaign contributions) and stolen from the public. Hey Halprin, if you don't like finite copyright, DON'T PUBLISH! Shove it up your ass, instead. That'll fix us. Who are you, anyway, your stuff seems to be almost invisible to Google. One unrated listing on Amazon. Not the next Shakespeare or Toynbee.
So sorry for the terrible things society has done! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't stand the thought of society getting something after you are dead, after you so clearly benefited from society. then you are simply an arrogant spoiled human being. Being selfish and having an obsession with ownership are not exactly redeeming qualities.
Profit from your toil while you are alive, then pass that profit on to your children if you wish. But a baker cannot make a loaf of bread and sell it many times over on into many generations. But she can certainly create wealth around baking and establish a business that can sustain her children into old age as long as her children can be smart enough and work hard enough to maintain this means of production.
Re:So sorry for the terrible things society has do (Score:3, Informative)
I'm so sorry that he feels he doesn't owe society anything for his "great" works. That without a stable society with culture and intelligence, people wouldn't be buying books or listening to music. Does he gather inspiration for his works of the "spirit and mind" from nothingness? What role does society play in the creative arts? If you can't stand the thought of society getting something after you are dead, after you so clearly benefited from society. then you are simply an arrogant spoiled human being. Being selfish and having an obsession with ownership are not exactly redeeming qualities. Profit from your toil while you are alive, then pass that profit on to your children if you wish. But a baker cannot make a loaf of bread and sell it many times over on into many generations. But she can certainly create wealth around baking and establish a business that can sustain her children into old age as long as her children can be smart enough and work hard enough to maintain this means of production.
I'm reminded of the statement from Fogerty v. Fantasy [cornell.edu], recently quoted at page 4 of the April 23, 2007, decision of Judge West in Capitol v. Foster [blogspot.com]:
copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works
In Fogerty it was held:
The primary objective of the Copyright Act is to encourage the production of original literary, artistic, and musical expression for the good of the public.... In the copyright context, it has been noted that "[e]ntities which sue for copyright infringement as plaintiffs can run the gamut from corporate behemoths to starving artists; the same is true of prospective copyright infringement defendants." Cohen, supra, at 622-623.
The Fogerty court went on to say:
While it is true that one of the goals of the Copyright Act is to discourage infringement, it is by no means the only goal of that Act. In the first place, it is by no means always the case that the plaintiff in an infringement action is the only holder of a copyright; often times, defendants hold copyrights too.....
More importantly, the policies served by the Copyright Act are more complex, more measured, than simply maximizing the number of meritorious suits for copyright infringement. The Constitution grants to Congress the 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." U. S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 8. We have often recognized the monopoly privileges that Congress has authorized, while "intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward," are limited in nature and must ultimately serve the public good. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 429 (1984). For example, in Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975), we discussed the policies underlying the 1909 Copyright Act as follows:
"The limited scope of the copyright holder's statutory monopoly . . . reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an `author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good." .....
We reiterated this theme in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349-350 (1991), where we said:
"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but `[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work." .......
Because copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works, it is peculiarly important that the boundaries of copyright law be demarcated as clearly as possible. To that end, defendants who seek to advance a variety of meritorious copyright defenses should be encouraged to litigate them to the same extent that plaintiffs are encouraged to litigate meritorious claims of infringement. In the case before us, the successful defense of "The Old Man Down the Road" increased public exposure to a musical work that could, as a result, lead to further creative pieces. Thus a successful defense of a copyright infringement action may further the policies of the Copyright Act every bit as much as a successful prosecution of an infringement claim by the holder of a copyright.
Missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, in light of the original goals of copyright, it's hard to argue that copyright is even necessasry anymore. Thanks to technology, everyone has the means to publish and distribute their works.
Personally, what I'd like to see is not longer copyrights, but shorter ones that may extended for a period through a for-fee registration process. If you really believed copyrights are intended to provide incentive to create, then they ought to expire quickly so that people need to create more often to reap the benefits. In a practical sense, it's quite rare that a copyrighted work yields profit. Of those that do, most realize their commercial value within 10 years.
I'd also like to see copyrights made non-transferrable rights granted to the author(s). "Works for hire" would cease to transfer copyright away from the author, but rather represent a limited-term exclusive license arrangement (for example, a record company would never own an artist's work, they would just receive a limited term exclusive right to marketing and distribution). Group authorship should be treated as each individual as an original author and a licensee of the work (like a work for hire).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, let's see. I got my Constitution here, and it says in Article I, Section 7...
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;
Hmm, it d
Re:Missing the point... (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea how you were modded insightful. Explain to me how the granting of monopolies acts to prevent monopolies...
Copyright in Britain was originally established so that printing houses who'd just bought an author's book wouldn't be undercut by other printing houses who could just run off copies without paying the author's fee (1). Copyright in the US was constitutionally established to promote the progress of science and useful arts (2). Copyright was intended to enforce artificial monopolies, not prevent them.
If you want people to look it up, maybe you should provide some credible references for your claims.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
2: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/a
Look it up.
Making the Case for Stealing-And a Lack of RESPECT (Score:3, Interesting)
As for file sharing and infringement, I think this is more a lack of respect -- sometimes for the artist, and sometimes for the money grubbing record companies that claim they're only in it for the artists, and known liars for saying so.
If you respect an artist -- and I respect Paul McCartney, for example -- so if I like his new CD "Memory Almost Full", I'll buy it. From all reviews, it's likely worth it.
But try and sell me an entire CD for one or two good songs, or resell stuff from the middle of the last century yet again, long after copyright should have expired, or sue people for file sharing when they never stole a single CD from you, and claim bogusly that every download is a lost sale, and I have no respect for you at all.
And try to go back to the famously non-working system of two and a half centuries ago that stifled creativity since no one could build on anyone else's work without permissions, lots of money changing hands, and copyrights owned by publishing houses rather than authors, and I have less than no respect for you.
And what might be less than no respect? Active opposition!
if Mark had his way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice article. Here is an invoice for the Intellectual Property fees you owe to the descendents of the many works of art you appropriated.
- The descendents of James Madison, for your quotation of the Constitution
- The descendents of Thomas Jefferson, for the quotation attributed to him.
- The descendents of William Shakespeare, for using the title of his play "Winter's Tale"
- The descendents of Moses, for the phrase "Does not then the government's giveth support its taketh," which is clearly alluding to the book of Job in the bible ("the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away", Job 1:21).
- The Chicago University Press, which has appropriated the rights to the ellipsis, a glyph that has remained in Copyright since it was first introduced in 200BC.
We hope you will be able to secure agreeable licensing terms for all these works. In the case that you cannot, you will naturally need to remove the reference. We look forward to seeing more of your work, and thank you for helping to support a thriving intellectual property market.
--Intellectual Property Association, Inc.
A message from a perpetual copyright holder (Score:3, Funny)
dave
idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
14 Years (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that Mr. Halprin is a strong contender to win the Douglas Feith award for 2007.
Re:Kill Disney (Score:5, Interesting)
they will buy the public domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a good parallel (Score:4, Insightful)
Information always had value. But by limiting its availability, it also gets a price.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... Taxes cease at death. Both are inevitable, but they're also mutually exclusive, so no double dipping.
Re: (Score:2)
So no more sequels written by mediocre authors or relatives years after the original author's death... explain why this is a bad thing.
What? Are you saying that the only way to be "creative" is to blatantly plagiarize existing works?
S