EU Copyright Reform: Your Input Is Needed! 154
An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has finally (as of last month) opened its public consultation on copyright reform. This is the first time the general public can influence EU copyright policy since fifteen years back, and it is likely at least as much time will pass until next time. In order to help you fill out the (English-only, legalese-heavy) questionnaire, some friendly hackers spent some time during the 30c3 to put together a site to help you. Anyone, EU citizen or not, organization or company, is invited to respond (deadline fifth of February). Pirate MEP Amelia Andersdotter has a more in-depth look at the consultation."
Abolish it. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, seriously. Copyright does more harm than good. Just get rid of the whole damn thing.
Obligatory reading. [ucla.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Abolish it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because politicians are corrupt asshats doesn't mean that the idea of politics and government is a bad one. Likewise, just because copyright is broken doesn't mean we should get rid of it either.
We should fix it.
Re: (Score:1)
The only fix I see for copyright is to abolish it entirely. I am opposed to censorship, and I am opposed to ideas that infringe upon free speech and private property rights; copyright does all of those things, and so it is unjustifiable.
Also, copyright is 100% unproven. No one has ever offered any actual proof that it has done any good. But let me stress that even if they could, the problems I mentioned above are infinitely more important; copyright will always remain unjustifiable, as freedom is most impor
Re:Abolish it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think some tweaks could be made to the legal code without discarding it completely. You could set it back to around the original term -- 10-20 years of a legal monopoly on the work in return for it being released into the public domain at the end of that time would be fine. I'd also set it up so that if you wanted to be eligible for any additional damages for infringement, you'd be required to register a DRM-free version with the Library of Congress, which will be released at the end of the copyright term. And under no circumstances could copyright ever be used to prohibit you from using hardware you purchased and own for whatever purposes you wanted to put it to. Under my regime.
Since politicians like money and the current copyright holders will deliver large briefcases of cash to them to prevent their little racket from being up-ended I really doubt this is much more than a dog-and-pony show before the back-room fuck-and-suck starts between the politicians and the political donors. By the time they get done I'm sure they'll have dismantled anything contributed by The People.
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright for resumes isn't needed to protect your employment prospects. We have other laws against misrepresentation, fraud, and plagiarism. Copyright was always overkill for such purposes. It's like using nuclear bombs to dig canals. As for employers, they seem to think it's good to receive several hundred resumes for each position, to increase their bargaining power, and are always reaching for the feeblest excuses to reject most. I find it incredible and hypocritical that they whine about talent sh
Re: (Score:2)
Having the copyright notice puts recruiters on notice that I will sue the bejsus out of them (at the salary under consideration times the number of years on average I stay with a company times triple damages for intentional copyright infringement.) I think I'd have a pretty good chance of winning that, too.
Huh. I wonder what jurisdiction you're in that permits you to do that, because it isn't the US. Over here, notice is good, but it isn't enough by itself to qualify for statutory damages. And statutory damages max out at $150,000 per work, which unless you are looking at fairly low salaried jobs for short durations, isn't the kind of money you're talking about. And you likely wouldn't get the maximum anyway, since you can only be awarded an amount which is just, up to the maximum, and I have a hard time seei
Shorten, but protect the mice (Score:2)
We need a different scheme for "design patents", or "design trademarks" so that one can retain the style of a certain mouse so long as you're doing business with the mouse, but lose it if you stop using it.
Trademark works very much that way, but doesn't protect artistic designs. Design patents exist, but don't deal with the rodent use case.
Having done that, the pressure to have silly periods in copyright can fall to zero.
--dave
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, it is being fixed. Just not in the way a normal person would expect it to be. It is being fixed for super-people, or "citizens", people who have paid their dues to be part of the ruling class.
This is just a "see, we consulted everyone to come up with this legislation", that extends copyright another 100 years, and adds the death penalty as a possible punishment for people making tools that can remove or disable DRM.
Re: Abolish it (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Just look at the geke.us venn diagrams showing the overlap between content crea
Re: (Score:1)
Also, the EU was for a long time much stronger on copyright than the US. Fro
Re: (Score:2)
However, everything that has been relevant to the above paragraph - 1886, 1909, 1976, etc. are all irrelevant to my initial idealistic (perhaps naive) point - as all of those codify terms which are way longer tha
Re: (Score:2)
I'm assuming you are genuinely a nice guy, who intends no harm and truelly believes copyright should be gone for the good of society as a whole.
But not everybody is honest and moral like you.
There are people who would take a product of creativity and try and sell it as their own, denying fruits of labour to the inventor, author or artist.
Surely copyright has problems, but those can be fixed to be fair to all. I say look at the original intent of copyright (which is roughly to encourage creators to keep crea
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If you assume that any level of utilitarianism is evil, then indeed it is pointless to try and reason with you.
Re: (Score:1)
Surely copyright has problems, but those can be fixed to be fair to all. I say look at the original intent of copyright (which is roughly to encourage creators to keep creating) and change the laws to ensure that original intent and nothing more.
Fixed how? The single biggest problem of copyright is that it gives corporations the ability to sue a competitor out of existence. And that's a problem you can't fix because that ability is also the fundamental basis of copyright.
Re: (Score:2)
Possible fix; whoever sues for copyright infringement is responsible for providing the evidence and bearing all costs for both parties until such evidence is found to be infringing. After that only reward actual damages unless the infringing party knowingly and willingly infringed. It's not a perfect fix, but it'd make it more risky for corporations to sue.
Re: (Score:1)
Possible fix; whoever sues for copyright infringement is responsible for providing the evidence and bearing all costs for both parties until such evidence is found to be infringing. After that only reward actual damages unless the infringing party knowingly and willingly infringed. It's not a perfect fix, but it'd make it more risky for corporations to sue.
And it will also effectively protect the MAFIAA from having to sign any contract with authors ever after. By all means, let's mildly annoy the big players by something that royally screws the small ones...
Re: (Score:2)
the original intent of copyright (which is roughly to encourage creators to keep creating)
Except it wasn't. The original intent of copyright was protectionism for the king's favorite printing press owner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, seriously. Copyright does more harm than good. Just get rid of the whole damn thing.
I think it'd be enough to make the Copyright holder have a right to a big slice of any revenue (not profits) made with use of copyrighted material without license. If there's no revenue, then there's no basis for demanding a slice of it.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it'd be enough to make the Copyright holder have a right to a big slice of any revenue (not profits) made with use of copyrighted material without license. If there's no revenue, then there's no basis for demanding a slice of it.
Exactly, the author's ability to get paid must not depend on preventing others from distributing his work. But then it's not copyright anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not believe in a total abolishment of copyright. It does three things well:
1. Protect the authors' right to recognition by making it illegal to claim another persons work as your own.
2. Protect the authors' reputation by allowing the author to veto any use of his work that may damage his or her reputation.
3. Protect the author from unwanted commercial exploitation by granting every author a monopoly over each and every copy of their work, for a limited time.
However, the means it does to accomplish thes
Re: (Score:1)
You obviously love ad hominems. Begone.
Copyright is often enforced through the use of censorship (bad) and infringes upon private property rights. That alone should be enough for any intelligent person to decide to reject it.
Want a government-enforced monopoly? Too bad. Find another way to make money; that's no one's responsibility but your own.
Re: (Score:3)
Copyright being enforced badly doesn't make the concept of copyright bad... it makes how it is enforced bad.
They *CAN* be separate... at least in theory.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Really? How would you enforce copyright without censorship and without infringing upon people's real private property rights? If I can't send those bits to someone else using my own equipment, you are infringing upon my rights.
Re: (Score:1)
>If I can't send those bits to someone else using my own equipment, you are infringing upon my rights.
Because your rights are the only rights that matter.
Re: (Score:1)
So you don't mind if I distribute copies of your daughters (or some other 18+ year old you care about) sexting images all over the internet?
Re:Abolish it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hi, my name is privacy. There are laws protecting me. They have nothing to do with copyright. They have everything to do with this scenario you described.
Also, please take your faux "oh think of the children" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
Re: (Score:1)
There are no fundamental rights. Your right to "own" something is granted by the society around you. Just drop the laws concerning owning stuff and see what you can hold. Freedom of speech is also a right granted by your society. They just decide to let you jabber about anything. But not actually tell lies about someone. How is that freedom of speech? Suddenly I'm not allowed to speak anything I like?
Copyright as an idea is great. Grant a limited time monopoly on some pieces of _ART_, so it's possible to do
Re:Abolish it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The concept of owning a physical good has been around a long time, and without laws people simply used physical force to protect their ownership.
The same thing is not true of information... You can protect information by keeping it secret, but once the secret gets out you can't stop it from spreading. Similarly the spread of information doesn't deprive the originator of that information.
Re: (Score:2)
As you say, you can protect information by keeping it secret... copyright is supposed to encourage those who might have otherwise kept their stuff secret to publish them by giving them some assurance, for what is supposed to be a limited time, that they will be the only ones allowed to copy it. What the general public gets out of this is access to the content in the first place, and in turn, society can be enriched by it. Society is expected to respect this system largely in good faith, although there ca
Stupid f**king submit button and no way to edit! (Score:2)
What's missing was the following:
Is it really too
Re:Abolish it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright is supposed to be a contract between the people and those who would produce such works... A contract should have both parties give something in exchange, and a fair exchange is far more likely to be respected by those involved.
However copyright as it exists today is not a fair exchange. The original concept has become extremely corrupted by the greed of a very small number of large publishers.
Copyright terms are ridiculously long, to the extent that we will all be dead before any content being made today enters the public domain, and when that eventually does happen most of the content will have long been forgotten, or be unreadable due to drm schemes or degraded/obsolete media.
Also why should someone be paid for some work they did 50 years ago, or even worse why should someone be paid for work their parents did 20 years before they were born? An honest day's work for an honest day's pay is fair - being continuously paid for the rest of your life and that or your children for work you did years ago is ridiculous. Want to provide for your children? Save or invest your money like everyone else has to.
Copyright today does not enrich the public domain, it provides no benefit whatsoever for 99% of people which is why people won't respect it.
Move back to a fair system. Give users the content on reasonable terms without trying to make them pay multiple times for the same thing, release it into the public domain while people are still able to remember it and people might actually respect the system.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Really? How would you enforce copyright without censorship and without infringing upon people's real private property rights? If I can't send those bits to someone else using my own equipment, you are infringing upon my rights.
I don't think anybody gives a rats ass what you do with your own bits. The problem starts when you pay somebody else for the privilege of using their bits, which that third party compiled at considerable expense and then make those bits available to third parties for free. In your wold all the bits are belong to you but unfortunately the law disagrees
It's not their bits. (Score:1)
If their bits are still their bits when copied on my HDD then I want to be paid rent.
However, the fact is that they are not THEIR bits. Therefore they and you should have no right to ownership of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Human society is largely built upon sharing.
Re: (Score:3)
If you created it yourself, you are the copyright holder, and therefore nobody can forbid you from distributing it (at least not using copyright law).
Copyright, as it exists today, doesn't give copyright holders a right to distribute their work; they already have this right as free speech, just like everyone else has. Rather, copyright is a system of exclusive rights, that is, rights to exclude; in this case a right to prohibit other people from using their free speech rights to, for instance, distribute a work. It is inherently a system of censorship by private people using state power. That's unavoidable. The question is whether it can be justified any
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright being enforced badly doesn't make the concept of copyright bad... it makes how it is enforced bad.
They *CAN* be separate... at least in theory.
Any law that allows one corporation to sue a competitor out of existence is bad. There's no possibility to enforce such law in a good way.
If you want a system which is beneficial for both creators and the general public, replace copyright with payright: the scope of works covered by payright would stay the same but everybody would be free to distribute those works under the condition that they pay a cut of any revenue made from using the work to its author. This system would open the market to lots of distr
Re: (Score:2)
It inevitably is, but the authors also give it away as a pdf.
Re: (Score:1)
There is no explicit mention of a copyright in the document itself, but the authors have posted this on their home page:
Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism [againstmonopoly.com] and gave us credit for what we have written. We encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won't try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded,
Warning to the EU, from Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Do *NOT* create any kind of web interface which automatically will send a letter to them based on some kind of template.
Someone who was very well meaning in Canada did this during our copyright consultation and the results backfired heavily... they received a staggering number of submissions, but because of the lack of effort that it takes to simply use a website, fill in your name in an appropriate field and hit "submit" without altering any of the letter content, and the fact that a very significant majority of the letter submissions were unaltered verbatim copies of one particular website's letter, the government chose to completely ignore those submissions... although the remainder of submissions that said similar ideas but were not based on that template still accounted for a majority of the total submissions, discounting that many submissions entirely almost certainly had a negative impact on how the government interpreted the consultation and the actions that they took in the aftermath of it. If even a quarter of those so called automated submissions had been an original letter from a concerned citizen which expressed the same basic ideas, I expect that the government may have interpreted the results of that consultation very differently than they did.
Re: (Score:1)
Orgs like the ACLU and the EFF create templates all the time for lazy citizens. Ignoring them sounds like an intentional circumvention of Democracy.
But as they say, "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
But as they say, "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
I suspect this was probably aimed at Government representatives & bodies, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
I would argue that this equally applies to the lazy citizens who jump on a bandwagon and send a template letter because someone shared a link with them on Facebook. If the citizens really cared about the issues at hand then they should be competent enough to research the issues at hand and put it into their own words.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hi! Original submitter here. We're well aware of this - hence if you check out the site, it's based on making the questions easy to understand and answer in your own words, rather than to have pre-filled responses.
The point is to get many, varied, and good responses, preferrably in many different (EU) languages as well, so the Commission can't ignore them (at least not without looking like absolute asshats).
Re: (Score:2)
"I expect that the government may have interpreted the results of that consultation very differently than they did."
No they wouldn't, because your current government is a US puppet government, so copyright reform in favour of Hollywood et. al. was always on the agenda. This was just the particular excuse they chose to use in this instance, it doesn't make sense of course, but they thought it sounded good enough to dupe people like you.
Think about it, it doesn't matter if those responses are the same, the fa
Suggestion: the EU should harmonize copyright term (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the EU contries are signatories to the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) [wto.org] treaty. That sets a minimum copyright term of 50 years. Many EU countries now have longer copyright terms, after heavy lobbying from the US music industry.
So suggest that the EU should harmonize their nations' laws by using the 50 year TRIPS limit. The EU can do with without renegotiating any external treaties. Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, and longer terms just keep many works orphaned and forgotten, rather than in the public domain.
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years. The US, with its much longer terms, would then be the major exception, and would be under pressure to reduce its copyright term.
It's a goal that's within reach. Whining about "copyright is evil" wiil get nowhere. Asking the EU to harmonize their laws with the WTO standard has a good chance of playing well in Brussels.
It should, but preferably at less than 50 years (Score:5, Informative)
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years.
I appreciate that there is an element of fighting for what you can realistically achieve in political matters. I'm also generally in favour of retaining the basic principle of copyright, at least until a better idea for promoting the creation and distribution of new works comes along.
Even so, I think the fundamental problem with your position is that it still implicitly accepts that a copyright term comparable to many humans' adult lifetimes is reasonable. With the rise of modern technologies, a much shorter term would still provide a substantial commercial incentive to create and share new works, without locking up aspects of our culture to the same degree. I'm open to discussions on the specifics for different types of work and for special cases like orphan works or works that continue to be developed over time, but I would expect a period of no more than 10-20 years from public disclosure should be more than adequate in just about any case today.
Re:It should, but preferably at less than 50 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Any period of time that is longer than the average lifetime of a human, isn't really limited.
Re:It should, but preferably at less than 50 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Your numbers sound reasonable, but to me they suggest something more like an upper bound on how long protection should last, not necessarily a target.
I believe copyright is best treated as a purely economic tool; it may have some desirable side-effects like giving credit to artists or maintaining confidentiality, but these are usually better treated as separate issues IMHO. On that basis, the job of copyright is to provide sufficient economic support to allow reasonable financial returns to be generated from creating and distributing useful works.
So, if a AAA console game has made 90% of the revenues it will ever generate today after the first few weeks, or a Hollywood blockbuster makes 90% of its revenues within a couple of years because that's when cinema showings, DVD releases and first runs on broadcast TV happen, then a period of perhaps five years from first public performance might be sufficient.
On the other hand, something like a school textbook can be very labour intensive to produce in good quality, but might bring in substantial revenues over several years if it can be adapted to produce slightly modified editions suitable for different national markets, not all of them necessarily available immediately in the first year of publication. A period as short as five years might cause a sharp reduction in returns in this case, potentially meaning it's no longer worth putting in the effort to produce a good textbook and corners get cut instead. This clearly isn't a desirable outcome if our goal is to promote the creation and distribution of good quality works, so maybe longer protection is needed in such cases to maintain sufficient incentive.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I agree. The solution, though, is clearly to grant different maximum term lengths for different classes of work. A newspaper is one of the shortest lived examples, with most of its copyright related value realized in less than a day. A term of, say, two months would be thoroughly generous and sufficient. A textbook is probably one of the longer lived sorts of works. (Well, so long as it isn't for modern history or other fast-paced subjects, but I think we can live with the small bit of waste that comes
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The solution, though, is clearly to grant different maximum term lengths for different classes of work.
I think we already do this to some extent in most jurisdictions, but I agree with your point all the same.
The best mechanism for dealing with this, I'm convinced, is to grant very short copyright terms which must be registered for
Here I do disagree, for the simple reason that as someone trying to run multiple small businesses, overhead is the #1 enemy, and registration of routine practices is a particularly wasteful form of overhead. We don't all have accountants, lawyers or admin staff; for some of us, any time taken to deal with the paperwork is time directly taken away from the handful of people doing actual creative work, an
Re: (Score:2)
I think we already do this to some extent in most jurisdictions
Not to my knowledge. (Though sound recordings tended to be treated unusually for a while) And not in the US anyway, which is what I'm most concerned with, being a USian.
Here I do disagree, for the simple reason that as someone trying to run multiple small businesses, overhead is the #1 enemy, and registration of routine practices is a particularly wasteful form of overhead. We don't all have accountants, lawyers or admin staff; for some of us, any time taken to deal with the paperwork is time directly taken away from the handful of people doing actual creative work, and if we're developing work for others then presumably that overhead roughly doubles because there's going to have to be some sort of assignment executed around the time we get paid as well for any such system to work.
Well for most businesses, they simply won't care, and neither will their clients. Automatically granting copyrights results in the ridiculous situation of granting copyrights even to individual Slashdot posts, not to mention many emails, text messages, and other ephemera that do not deserve copyrights because of the simple fact that copyrigh
Re:Suggestion: the EU should harmonize copyright t (Score:4, Interesting)
So suggest that the EU should harmonize their nations' laws by using the 50 year TRIPS limit. The EU can do with without renegotiating any external treaties. Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, and longer terms just keep many works orphaned and forgotten, rather than in the public domain.
This is an OK suggestion, with the caveat that the TRIPS limit should be a limit cap, not the actual limit, since the effect of setting it to the TRIPS limit would be immediate and incessant lobbying to raise the TRIPS limit. This is a likely outcome of setting the TRIPS limit as a cap as well, but then there would be no obligation on the part of the EU to raise their limit, should such lobbying be successful.
Assuming this is done, there should also be a proviso that, should the TRIPS limit be lowered, that the EU limits are also automatically lowered, while any raises in the limit should require explicit EU legislation to match. So if the EU "harmonizes" to 50 years to equal the TRIPS limit, then the TRIPS limit goes down to 40 years, the EU automatically goes down to 40 years, and if the TRIPS limit is then jacked back up to 50 years or higher, the EU remains at 40 years, low watermarking the EU limit.
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years. The US, with its much longer terms, would then be the major exception, and would be under pressure to reduce its copyright term.
This is highly unlikely; the two California Senators with the most power in regard to U.S. Copyright law are strongly incentivized through campaign contributions from the movie industry bodies (MPAA, et. al.), and, to a lesser extent, since it is less localized to California, the music industry.
In other words, there would be about as much pressure on the U.S. to lower its limits as there is for Disney to put Mickey Mouse in the public domain, and about as much as there is on the current WIPO to lower the TRIPS limits -- which is to say "effectively none".
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
50 years is already way beyond any sensibility. 50 years might have been sensible in a time when it took ages from conception to publication to penetration, but in a time when the time between conception and penetration, given rapid development tools and distribution and advertising venues like the internet, could be measured in days rather than years, anything past 10 years is already an abomination.
In this fast paced world, you will rather not invest in an artistic venture where you cannot regain your inv
Re:Suggestion: the EU should harmonize copyright t (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe. On the other hand, 10 year terms means no movie company ever has to pay the author of a book for making the movie out of a book, or adher to the authors wishes. Just wait the years out.
Re: (Score:2)
For instance, physical authors, whom may want to ensure survival of their direct descendance, could enjoy up to say thirty years from death (or less if all immediate descendants have become adults able to sustain themselves), whereas companies, which seek profitability, would only enjoy at most 10 years from publication (or less if profitability has obviously been reached eariler).
Of course, actual criteria for ei
Re: (Score:2)
In 10 years, 50 Shades of Grey, as an example, will be a long-forgotten memory. Just last year it was THE book to be reading (although probably not on public transport). If they make a film out of it in 10 years, it might just help shift a few extra books.
I'd hazard that the same would be true for Harry Potter. I seriously doubt it'll be a popular book in 5 years, and so making a film might give it a bit of a boost. Shame they already used up that option though ;-)
assumptions... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe. On the other hand, 10 year terms means no movie company ever has to pay the author of a book for making the movie out of a book, or adher to the authors wishes. Just wait the years out.
Is that a bad thing?
On the other hand, 10 year terms means no book author ever has to pay the movie company for making a book out of the movie, or adher[sic] to the companies wishes. Just wait the years out.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're stupid enough to wait out the 10 years to make a movie on a bestselling book, I'll butt in and pay the author to make one while it's still hot. You can come out with your movie 10 years after mine when nobody gives a shit about it anymore.
I doubt anyone has a problem with that.
Never underestimate the power of competition. If you're willing to wait, someone else certainly won't be.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure if you're suggesting that's a bad thing?
It means films can be made for books without inheriting families or copyright hoarders blocking it unnecessarily or with unrealistic demands. It means people outside Hollywood can have a go at making films based on books without needing Hollywood style fortunes to barter for a license.
It sounds like a very good thing IMO, sure it may mean more crap films on famous books, but it also means more choice, and amongst that choice will be a bunch of gems that w
Re: (Score:2)
Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, [...]
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
That way it actually works as an incentive to keep creating.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the
Re: (Score:2)
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
Indeed, at least in France: we have "moral" rights (correct attribution of the author, respect to the author's work) which cannot be sold or otherwise taken away from the author (even after their death and even beyond the 50 years limit), and there are "patrimonial" rights which govern anything related to commercial use of the work, and which can be sold.
Re: (Score:2)
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
Actually, it should be based on when a work is no longer likely to generate significant copyright related revenue. You forget that the vast majority of works are flops with no significant copyright related revenue ever. Something like Gigli will never make a reasonable return, yet it's stupid to grant it a perpetual copyright as a result.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
Why?
We don't have this in the US, and yet we have loads of authors making loads of works all the time. Other countries that do have this don't appear to be doing better tha
Re: (Score:2)
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Let the market for the work drive it's copyright term. I think most copyrights should be registered in a database, the only exceptions being works with exteremely short life spans such as news items. Rights holders should get a certain short period of free protection, where the length of the period is dependent on the nature of the work (music recording, video, novel, poem, song lyrics, news broadcast, combinations thereof). The period would be determined factoring th
Go and do something about it! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We should distinguish between the end user and a commerical user.
While I don't think there is much to be made from the early Beatles albums (first 2 albums are now over 50 years old), I don't think anyone should be allowed to use one of those tracks in movies, adverts, etc without permission or payment.
So 50 years for sales, 70 years for commercial re-use.
Copyright is made out of people (Score:5, Informative)
Since copyright is made out of people, and people come up with laws to try to maximize productivity and creation, there will always be scavengers and predators looking to exploit copyright for private gain.
Google, for example, loves weaker copyright protection so they can sell 3rd party content. Media companies and small-time authors love copyright because it rewards the creation of works.
Meanwhile, fans dislike copyright because it creates an imbalance between quality vs. convenience (cracked software is ALWAYS better) or availability (a movie or game isn't available in a certain region or is no longer sold).
Because copyright is made of out of people, there isn't going to be a "final solution" --- it must always be subject to revision because any legal system is subject to exploits.
I'm not implying "you shouldn't try", actually I'm saying you always SHOULD try to improve it.
But the results will be imperfect next time too
Re: (Score:1)
Copyright registration (Score:3)
One of the things Amelia Andersdotter suggests people say 'yes' to, is required copyright registration. I'm sure the idea is that it makes it harder for some random person or company to come after you for placing their image (usually with all credits cropped out, if posts on imgur and such are any indication) on your blog/t
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile, fans dislike copyright because it creates an imbalance between quality vs. convenience (cracked software is ALWAYS better) or availability (a movie or game isn't available in a certain region or is no longer sold).
That's not about copyright, that's about copy protection aka DRM. Copyright doesn't prevent the act of copying, it just provides a legal defense against it.
Deadline is 5 February (Score:4, Informative)
There's only one month left, don't procrastinate too long.
Re: (Score:2)
I vote. But then again, I'm not in the US. If I were, I would probably not. For the same reason why I would have considered voting in the Soviet Union moot.
Re: (Score:2)
Voting in the US is about as meaningful as it was in the Soviet Union.
Copyright in the U.S.? (Score:1)
Nah, those that would enforce it here ran off to be gmen/spooks and fight some corporate war for oi... err middle eastern mob... err terrorists, yeah, that's it, terrorism...
-And I wouldn't really take anything the U.S. has to heart on pretty much any subject these days, they're nuts here, I mean flat ass nuttier than squirrel shit, bat shit crazy.
Please add these provisos (Score:4, Interesting)
Please add these provisos:
(1) If a work is explicitly placed into the public domain, then it receives indemnity protection equivalent to that provided by the BSD two clause license, so that authors are not *required* to keep a work out of the public domain and place a license on it in order to obtain a legal "hold harmless". Most BSD licensed software, for example, would have been placed in the public domain, rather than licensed at all, if it were not for the need for the author to disclaim legal liability.
(2) If a work is placed in the public domain, it shall not be legal to place it under other terms; it remains in the public domain in perpetuity. You can't just take a public domain work and slap a license or DRM on it; for example, a book placed in the public domain can not be converted to a DRM protected eBook format which would prevent further dissemination of the work (e.g. no grabbing Joseph Conrad from Project Gutenberg and making it non-redistributable).
Re: (Score:2)
Don't complicate things needlessly.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the DRM that gives them the ability to sue. It's the idea that they somehow gained any rights on the work by making an ebook from it (be it DRMed or not). Your suggestion is as if you'd try to fight theft not by making theft illegal, but by making it illegal to carry away stuff in bags.
The fact that there are forms which are capable of being filed gives them the right to sue; you can sue anyone for any reason. If someone paces something in the public domain, and then some company complains that the work belongs to them, and has a deep wallet to obtain a preponderance of evidence, vs. the person who did not profit from the work they placed in the public domain, and thus does not have a deep wallet, the probable outcome is clear.
Most Disney works do not fall into that category, BTW, since
Re: (Score:2)
(1) wouldn't be very practical until it applied in most of the world and without a claim of who placed it in the public domain it'd be like grabbing random things with no copyright notice off web pages. Granted, you'd probably replace the two clause with "Placed in the public domain by [name], [year]" but it wouldn't really make it any easier to show that all your code is legally licensed.
(2) would be silly since everything derives from the public domain, you're trying to narrow down a direct reproduction (
Re: (Score:2)
(1) wouldn't be very practical until it applied in most of the world and without a claim of who placed it in the public domain it'd be like grabbing random things with no copyright notice off web pages. Granted, you'd probably replace the two clause with "Placed in the public domain by [name], [year]" but it wouldn't really make it any easier to show that all your code is legally licensed.
I think that this would actually require some form of registration, which I would hope would be without charge, given that it's a gift to the public, and the public should perhaps pay the "gift tax".
(2) would be silly since everything derives from the public domain, you're trying to narrow down a direct reproduction (slap a license on it) as something special but you'd end up in a legal quagmire over how little needs to change. You can take a BSD codebase, add 0.01% spice and sell it as your own closed source binary, the public domain would be the same.
Direct reproduction. And there is already established case law regarding "trivial changes" which was hammered out the the USL/UCB lawsuit so no legal quagmire. Derivative works involving non-trivial changes would be subject to copyright (as the USL cpio.h header file, et. al.).
Re: (Score:2)
Regarding point (2) - would it be your intent to simply prevent distribution of a public domain work as a copyrighted work, or would it prevent the copyrighting of a derivative work from anything in the public domain.
Example: Currently, if someone arranges "Silent Night" for bell-choir, the arrangement is copyright (not the work, but the specific version created for bell choir). Under the (2) provision, would that bell choir version now be public domain also? What if they added a new section - a bridge - w
Re: (Score:2)
Regarding point (2) - would it be your intent to simply prevent distribution of a public domain work as a copyrighted work, or would it prevent the copyrighting of a derivative work from anything in the public domain.
The former. Derivative works would still be copyrightable. It would probably be useful to also require a notice of derivation when mentioning features or use, similar to the clause 3 in the 3 clause BSD, but only that it was derived from a public domain work, rather than preventing using someone else's good name. This would be contentious, I think, however.
Simple, really: (Score:1, Funny)
1. Burn copyright law
2. Profit!
Use it or lose it (Score:2, Insightful)
I have an idea (Score:3)
Take out all the parts that were lobbied for.
Take it back to something reasonable, like 20 years since creation. Perhaps require copyright registration so there is a place someone can go to check if something is under copyright.
That, or adopt the Marshall Islands copyright laws.
/dev/null (Score:2)
message.show("thank you for your input!");
}
They should disregard the copywrongs.eu responses (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Hi! Original submitter here!
Have you visited the site at all? The front page allows you to choose a number of grievances that you would like to address (e.g. Youtube videos not playable in your country), after which the site present the relevant questions (verbatim) from the questionnaire, and gives a number of hints on what the questions mean, basically translating the legalese into plain english.
At the end, you get a copy of the questionnaire with your answers filled in to download, which you then need to
Re: (Score:1)
No really, it's true. Your input is needed so they can make the completely true claim that they consulted the public. That sort of thing makes for great PR.
Re: (Score:3)
When the public is allowed comment, they typically reply using terrible logic. And I mean logic that terrifies the reader. The arguments are not thought through, and only seem like rational thoughts because the author believed the premise.
Any legitimate evaluation of the general public opinion would have the same effect as tossing 80% of replies at random, due to poorly laid out arguments which boil down to "my opinion is based on the news I get from one or two aggregators and I have not considered real wor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)