Copyright Week: If We Want To Get Copyright Right, It's Time To Go Back To Basics
from the copyright-week dept
All week we’ve been posting stories for Copyright Week, discussing important elements of copyright law that are at risk of getting trampled or destroyed in the effort to reform copyright. These are issues that will be squashed almost entirely if we leave it to the lobbyists to hash out what a new copyright law looks like. Today is the final day of Copyright Week, which happens to coincide with the second anniversary of Internet Freedom Day — the day that the internet spoke up and said NO!! the last time a group of lobbyist sought to change copyright in dangerous ways, with SOPA/PIPA.
So how can we get copyright right? Well, respecting things like transparency, the public domain, open access, the freedom to tinker and fair use are certainly important and necessary starting points.
But it goes much further than that. I think it’s worth repeating the basic framework for copyright reform I suggested last year, because not only does it still apply, it appears that Congress has shown no interest in following that framework. Instead, they’ve still been setting everything up as a “blue team vs. red team” game where every proposal has someone arguing for the exact opposite, and everything is seen as a zero sum game, rather than looking for solutions that actually expand the opportunity for everyone. So here are the basic principles I suggested earlier, which I think bear repeating:
- Pretty much everyone is both a content creator and a content consumer. Over and over again we heard about concerns of certain creators as if they were a separate class of people unrelated to the wider public. That’s silly. Especially as we have copyright law today — in which every piece of creative content is immediately covered by copyright at the moment the expression is set in fixed form — we are all creators. Nearly every email you write is probably covered by copyright. Every creator is also a consumer of content, and that includes professional creators. Professional content creation often involves building off of the influences of other works. We should support that as well. Otherwise, we begin to treat copyright as a sort of welfare program for professional creators, which is never what it was intended to be.
- Technology is just a tool. It is neither a competitor to, nor an enemy of, content creators. With so many Representatives setting up the debate as “content vs. technology,” we start to go down a very dangerous and distorted path that has little to do with reality. As a tool, technology certainly can create challenges for existing and traditional business models, but also tremendous opportunity. Look at the success of platforms like Kickstarter today. Would anyone seriously argue that the “technology” company Kickstarter is “anti” creator? Similarly, we’re seeing more and more artists succeed by embracing new technology platforms that enable them to do amazing things: Bandcamp, TopSpin, BandZoogle, ReverbNation, SongKick, Dropbox, SoundCloud, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, HumbleBundle — and many, many, many more. The list literally goes on and on and on. These are the tools that so many content creators are embracing today to help them to be better able to create, to promote, to distribute, to connect and to monetize their works than ever before. To argue that this is tech vs. content, when the tech companies seem to be handing content creators the most useful tools they’ve ever had to be successful, seems ridiculous.
- Every legislative choice has costs and benefits. Too often, it seems like those pushing a certain proposal like to only look at one side of that equation. If we’re to have an effective debate over copyright reform, it should include an upfront look at the costs and the benefits, the conditions and the consequences of various decisions across the board on the public. The purpose of copyright law, explicitly, is to promote the progress. We should be weighing carefully whether or not each change really would promote progress of science and the useful arts.
- Decisions need to be made based on empirical data. As we’ve discussed in the past, historically, copyright reform discussions have been almost entirely faith-based. This is why the claims of “everyone just wants stuff for free” are so concerning,” since the data suggests that’s not even close to true. Given the recent call for objective research that would be practical in the copyright debate by the US National Research Council, I’m hopeful that we’ll actually begin to see some useful data for this discussion. Hopefully those in Congress will actually pay attention to the data, rather than continue to insist that blatantly false claims must be true.
- Finally, and most importantly, the focus needs to remain on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. It’s not about “protecting” any industry or any class. It’s about what most helps to promote overall progress. Each proposal should be judged on that standard.
After I posted this last time, I had two lobbyists accuse me of being insane (literally — they claimed I had mental deficiencies) for daring to suggest that everyone is both a creator and a content consumer. Of course, there’s an easy response to that: if not everyone is a content creator, then perhaps we shouldn’t have copyright laws that automatically grant life + 70 years copyright to every email they write. But, really, if we can stop looking at copyright as some sort of silly war between “artists” and “technologists” we could actually make a fair bit of progress. Copyright was always supposed to be about benefiting the public — and when innovation opens up new opportunities for artists and consumers alike, that can work hand in hand.
Rather than viewing copyright policy as a zero sum game where one party “winning” means someone else losing, let’s recognize that the only real stakeholder is the public, and any policy should be designed to be best for the public, and that’s one where both artists and technologists are better off as well, because new technologies enable artists to better create, promote, distribute, connect and monetize their works, while providing the public with more content, more choices, more ways to support, more ways to share, more ways to express and to communicate. And the end result, as we’ve seen throughout history, tends to be better for just about everyone — with the exception of those who stay wedded to obsolete models that are built around being the gatekeeper for areas of friction that no longer apply.
Focus on what’s best for the public and it will also be best for creators and technologists alike. That’s how you “get copyright right.”
Filed Under: benefits, copyright, copyright week, fair use, public domain, the public
Comments on “Copyright Week: If We Want To Get Copyright Right, It's Time To Go Back To Basics”
Um...
copyright to every email they right.
You mean “write” correct?
Re: Um...
No. The NSA has been going through emails and correcting spelling mistakes. Then they own the copyright and having the emails in their possession is now legal.
"Copyright Week" was Mike's usual boilerplate.
Old and ongoing assertions that anomalies and abuses prove all copyright is bad and should be done away with, especially so that his grifter pals like Aereo and Megaupload can get a tiny fraction of the “sunk (or fixed) costs” that took to produce content, besides fraction of the realizable value when marketed in legal ways: to grifters and pirates it’s all gravy.
One dolt writer was remarkable for asserting that broadcasters get valuable “spectrum space” for free, totally blanking out fact that content costs money. Next, same writer blanked out that taking someone else’s content as your sole source of value to relay on has already been ruled as unfair competition. But for unknown reason, Mike likes to promote Aereo, asserting that its “long wire” on which passes content that it doesn’t pay a cent toward producing is somehow high-tech and a new legal way of grifting. — But no, it’s just a legalistic anomaly that conflicts with basic copyright, and I highly doubt it will stand when the Supreme Court so readily took it to review.
Give ya this, kids: uniform views here at Techdirt, that valuable content pops out of thin air without any “sunk (or fixed) costs”, that you little pirates should be free to “share” or even monetize it, and that those who actually paid for the content aren’t due any consideration at all.
But it’s just uniform advocacy of theft! Mike’s notions don’t in ANY way that I see ease or increase actual production of content, just re-distributes WHO gets money from already produced content, or argues for consumption without exchange of value. And again, breaking the societal deal that is copyright which allows venturing funding in expectation of monopoly of rewards from one’s product is just plain immoral. — No one would advocate building cars if everyone is free to steal the finished product! MIKE’S NOTIONS ARE KLEPTOCRAT ECONOMICS!
You’re not on the leading edge of new production models, Mike, just advocating plain old-fashioned theft.
Techdirt! Where Pirate Mike uses the cachet of an Ivy League economics degree to make facile excuses for common theft.
Anyhoo, as ever, real and HUGE stories went without mention here. Most notable as usual are Google’s alarming moves to expand its spying on everyone with new gadgets, exert more unwanted social control through linking up its “services”, to cut back on user control in its software, and to replace humans with robots, this week with definite military application!
To anyone who can extrapolate trends, Google appears to be building a high-tech Fourth Reich with utterly creepy combination of “Skynet Terminator” and “1984” telescreens in every house:
Google’s robots and creeping militarization
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/09/googles-robots-and-creeping-militarization/
Google gobbles upstart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 BEELLION IN CASH
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/13/google_buys_smart_home_device_builder_nest_for_32_beeelion_in_cash/
What a quandary is commenting on Techdirt! It’s a case of dumbed (as in foolish) if you do, or dumbed (as in silent) if you don’t!
08:14:14[j-197-5]
Re: "Copyright Week" was Mike's usual boilerplate.
Alternatively, they could just hack the NSA and save all that money.
However, you failed, once again, to address the point that Mike is making – that there needs to be a major overhaul of the current Imaginary Property systems. I’m not just talking about copyright, either; patents and even trademark law need major reforms to reduce the likelihood of abuses.
For example, you can have those stiff punishments for law infringements, provided there are also robust mechanisms to stop abuses of the system.
Re: Re: "Copyright Week" was Mike's usual boilerplate.
@ Anonymous Coward,
>>> Alternatively, they could just hack the NSA and save all that money.” — I don’t get this, it’s clearly facetious.
>>> However, you failed, once again, to address the point that Mike is making – that there needs to be a major overhaul of the current Imaginary Property systems. I’m not just talking about copyright, either; patents and even trademark law need major reforms to reduce the likelihood of abuses. — For the hundredth time, I’m NOT required to stay within Mike’s framing! It’s stupid to let opponent set terms of debate. — But anyway, I HAVE proposed solution to the problems; it’s a meta-solution: TAX THE HELL OUT OF THE RICH! So that greed is largely taken out of ALL systems. And that’s been proven to work every time it’s tried.
>>> For example, you can have those stiff punishments for law infringements, provided there are also robust mechanisms to stop abuses of the system. — I’m not FOR stiff punishments, so that’s a non-starter with me. But the abuses are so manifold — and as you point out, not just in IP — that the only solution must cover all systems at once in FAIR WAY, and again, that’s TAX THE HELL OUT OF THE RICH, the very ones who are privileged beyond a thousand excesses and using the power of paper money to create more and more unfair conditions.
We now have a practically neo-feudal system where The Rich run wild with high-tech re-distribution from the poor, and surveillance and control systems. They’re even debating how many of us to kill off. This is not new, not unexpected, it’s just the latest and worst variant of how the few at the ALWAYS ruin civilization by seeking TOTAL power. You’d think we’d catch on by now.
A free people must be moral in themselves and sticklers about keeping The Rich as limited as possible.
Alex Jones of Infowars agrees that the people who run the world are psychopaths! — But he doesn’t want to tax the hell out of them! — It’s the key silly self-contradiction of our times.
08:36:49[j-297-4]
if we want to get copyright right, we need to keep the massive, self-serving corporations and industries plus the USTR out of the talks so sensible suggestions can be put forward and reasonable results drawn. any of the above involved and you can kiss even the discussions gone, let alone the sensible ones and the hope of reasonable results. they are not interested in anything except complete domination, regardless of the outcome for any other body, person or industry!!
BUT we already have a working copyright system!
You keep trying to obscure basics with anomalies and abuses, when copyright is no more complex than this:
>>> Copyright is derived from the facts of existence; it is natural law and cannot be narrowly defined; it is self-evident like the US Constitution itself which is only valid UNDER common law; statute is at best tertiary.
) Creators inherently have SOLE RIGHT TO COPY their work.
) Creating is and has always been more difficult than copying.
) The special provisions in law for copyright stem from the above 2 facts. It’s specific setting out of “intellectual property” rights for creating works given the relative ease of copying.
Actually, the really key point for Techdirt is that no system can exist with rampant stealing. You keep trying to justify STEALING.
Mike frequently runs items on “copyright abuse” intended to STIFLE expression knowing full well that his fanboys then consider all copyright bad and use those bad acts to justify their own STEALING of content. As Mike never runs items condemning STEALING, it’s difficult to see how he “supports copyright”. — Mike sets up a false alternative: in fact, BOTH STIFLING AND STEALING ARE BAD.
08:22:39[j-485-3]
Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
Wrong on all counts. Please read my reply to you here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140117/10562125920/copyright-week-fair-use-is-not-exception-rule.shtml#c374
Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
“Creators inherently have SOLE RIGHT TO COPY their work.”
Correct, creators, not descendents of creators (who didn’t create) or organizations (which don’t create, merely appropriate.)
Re: Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
Correct, creators, not descendents of creators (who didn’t create) or organizations (which don’t create, merely appropriate.)
No, actually, because copyrights can be transferred and sold as if they were personal property. This is by design; copyright’s method is to create “a marketable right,” not to protect any kind of natural right.
In other words, its mechanism is designed to further the economic exploitation of works (e.g. for-profit publishing and distribution). That is how works reach the public, which is copyright’s ultimate goal.
Re: Re: Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
I think the idea is that any “inherent (sole) right” would have to belong to the actual creators, and not be transferable.
Which, if accepted, would mean that copyright as it is presently constituted is not a manifestation of that inherent right…
Re: Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
“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…”
After which their respective Writings and Discoveries enter the public domain.
Back then the term was 14 years, if memory serves. How times have changed!
Re: Re: Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
Depends on what you mean by “originally”. The following is US-centric:
The Statue of Anne never applied to the American colonies, but three of them had their own version of copyright. Two limited the term to 7 years, and one to 5 years.
After the Continental Congress, who had no authority to mandate copyright but recommended 14 years + an option to renew for another 14, most of the states followed that recommendation. 5 states did not follow the recommendation, and had nonrenewable terms of 14, 21, or 21 years.
The Copyright Act of 1790 brought everybody under the same scheme — 14 years, plus the option to renew for another 14 if the author was still alive at the end of the first 14. (Except for charts & maps, which followed the Statute of Anne). It is worth noting that at this time, copyright did not apply to music or newspapers, and the vast majority of writings were never registered and so never covered by copyright.
An aside — Blue talks a lot about common law being the basis of copyright, and he’s mostly incorrect about this… but here’s where it comes in: in 1834, the Supreme Court ruled there was a common law right to control the initial publication of a work, but that common law right did not extend to subsequent publications.
During the Civil War (1861), the Confederate states had a copyright term of 28 years + an option to renew for another 14.
Up until the 1976 copyright act, copyright law was a weird dual system where every state and the federal government had their own copyright laws (that did not always agree.) The 1976 act unified everything under federal law and did away with the common law business.
Quick cheat sheet of federal copyright terms:
1790: 14 + 14 renewal
1831: 28 + 14 renewal
1909: 28 + 28 renewal
1976: 75, or life of the author + 50, extended copyright to unpublished works
1992: No more renewal requirement
1998: 95/120, or life of the author + 70
Re: Re: Re:2 Corrections
I really should proofread!
Here’s the corrections:
“and had nonrenewable terms of 14, 21, or 21 years.” should read “and had nonrenewable terms of 14, 20, or 21 years.”
“The Copyright Act of 1790 brought everybody under the same scheme” Phrased badly. This was the introduction of federal copyright law. It did not do away with the copyright laws the various states had in place.
“1992: No more renewal requirement” should read “No more registration requirement”
Re: Re: Re:3 Corrections
Thanks, John. I’d forgotten where I’d got that 14 years figure from!
Re: Re: Re:2 BUT we already have a working copyright system!
It may be worth adding that before the printing press the only way an author could make money from writing was to sell his services as a scribe. The printing press created a demand for new books, which resulted in printers buying manuscripts from authors, which was the first instance of the being able to profit from someone copying their work.
Re: BUT we already have a working copyright system!
you might want to look up the meaning of the word “inherently”
the ability to prevent anyone from copying your creation is not nor will it ever be an “essential constituent or characteristic” of creating work.
if it was inherently the work itself stop the act of copying if non creator tried to copy it.
If you were even close to being right, copyright would date back to at least the invention of writing, where in fact it date to about 200 years after the invention of the printing press. Copyright is an invention of the publishing industry to retain control over created works that they originally gained as censors. From the Wikipedia article:-
Re: Re:
The only natural laws are the right to fight to the death over resources and winner takes all. If a law is truly a natural one then you can observe two wild animals in a dispute over resources obeying it.
Every law other than that one is as artificial as any other. It’s funny how people like to claim the right to ignore all but ‘natural’ laws — and they always define laws that inconvenience them as not being ‘natural’ somehow.
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen two packs of wild dogs don three-piece suits and sue eachother over ownership of a dead cow, have you?
Re: Re: Re:
The fight pu up by universal ove a dancing baby comes close to a pack of dogs chasing a lone animal off of a dead cow.
step one
time
10 years + you can pay a fee to the govt to get 10 more….that money has to go directly to say science/education to reduce costs…NOT your politicians pockets.
if you cant make most of your money inside those first tenyears ….forget it and ….if you make a good buck we society want a piece of it….
thats step one….till i see this its not balanced it rape of the eocnomy
Re: step one
The money would go to creating and maintaining a government database so anyone could freely look up if something was under copyright or not. This is one of the most serious problems with copyright today – trying to find out if older works had their copyright renewed. The government has completely failed at providing this information.
Re: step one
10 -15 years non renewable. The vast majority of works probably make 99% of their sales within 5 years of release. The best way to test this is try to find a work that was not a massive best seller (Harry Potter) released in 2003 and see how easy it is to locate a new copy on Amazon. The point is the sales curve for most works probably peaks shortly after release and tapers off. Another way to look at this is how many works are reprinted/re-released by the publisher after initial release.
Also, look a best-selling author, say James Patterson or Clive Cussler (substitute any best selling author), they do not make much money on their older works; if you can find them. They make their money on writing new works.
What is a society today? The only way to view copyright realistically is not to look to the past and how society was designed then, cause the world is very different today. It is actually an important realisation that trade agreements are part of what is removing cultural boundaries, along with the internets possibilities.
In that context you have to look at new ways to codify cultural protection mechanism since the “good of society” is a free ride for other societies…
One way to alleviate the problem is to make the protection universal and force it through in international agreements.
Another is to force a clearer separation of each nations jurisdiction and the following rights and duties.
With both of the above choices, the only way to enforce them is through undemocratic means and removal of liberal rights for some. As such, it is therefore a better choice to look at the copyright itself, instead of trying to change or stop improvement to conform to copyright.
The other main issue is that copyright is build on a tradition in time of promoting equality of opportunity and leveraging the lesser part of a business deal. As such, one of the important reasons for implementing it in Europe was as a leverage of the content creator in negotiation with the publisher and give an opportunity for the creator to earn money on their creation instead of only having publishers planking whatever they could find and releasing it under new names.
The time has changed and non-standard licensing (anything using ie. “free to share”), remixing, higher order licensing and some creators not selling their economic rights, are examples of issues the laws were never formed around and several of these were likely never even considered feasible when the rights were formed. To deal with these issues a restructuring with focus on limitations and fair use is a necessity.
The OP doesn’t address these reasons for why copyright has to change, which is a pity.
Re: Re:
I sense this entire post is sarcasm. Two main clues (though the entire post seems like a joke but if you are serious you are either a shill or you are seriously delusional. Chances are you are a shill or a lawyer or someone that disproportionately benefits from these laws).
“the only way to enforce them is through undemocratic means”
So you admit that these laws are undemocratic and you agree with them? We should all be forced to be subject to laws that the majority disagrees with because they serve the interests of a small minority.
“and give an opportunity for the creator to earn money on their creation instead of only having publishers planking whatever they could find and releasing it under new names.”
This has got to be a joke. These laws exist only because publishers and middlemen/distributors lobbied for them, not because content creators lobbied for them. and if you think for a second that the publishers lobbied for these laws because it’s in the interests of content creators you are seriously deluded. The publishers and record labels are the ones lobbying for these laws the most. Musicians hardly make any money from CD and music sales, they may make a few pennies per sale if they’re lucky, the record labels make most of the money. Musicians make money off of other things such as touring and whatnot.
Like I said, your post is either sarcasm or seriously deluded. When most people can’t tell sarcasm apart from the real thing this is proof that those that hold pro IP positions should not be taken seriously.
Re: Re: Re:
“So you admit that these laws are undemocratic and you agree with them?”
most laws are undemocratic and yet agree with them or not you have to obey them.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
democratic being voted on and accepted by a majority, most laws are not formed that way. Some are, most not.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Thank god for representative democracy with emphasis on “representative”.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
We’re represented by the best government money can buy.
Problem is our politicians no longer recognize the corrosion unjust laws create.
The copyright extension should be ignored like prohibition or the 55 mph speed limit.
In the past some mistakes were corrected…
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The fact that you think we have to obey a law doesn’t make the law anymore just. and by undemocratic I mean these laws aren’t intended to serve the public interest and aren’t passed because of public pressure but they are passed behind closed doors with corporate interests present thanks to corporate pressures in exchange for politicians receiving campaign contributions and revolving door favors (not because they serve or are intended to serve the public interest). That’s not democratic.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Politicians don’t pass these laws as representatives of what the public wants. They pass them as representatives of what a few corporate interests want, corporate interests that offer politicians with campaign contributions and revolving door favors in return. That’s not democracy. Politicians passing laws not because it’s in the public interest but because they get something personally in return is not democracy. Elected politicians should be serving our interests. Negotiations and meetings on the subject should be held publicly with public input during the process. Politicians shouldn’t secretly meet with corporate interests over what they want. Let the corporate interests talk to Congress publicly at a congressional hearing if they want Congress to pass a law for instance. A hearing open to all. That’s what democracy is.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, you don’t have to obey them. There are plenty of laws I don’t obey, which I won’t get into here.
Re: Re: Re:
but what he was rightly saying I think is that different countries and societies have different standards and laws, for trade and cultural exchange between these different cultures some bending from both sides is required, that is the case. The various trade agreements are trying to achieve those goals, by trying to find common and acceptable ground to allow all groups to operate.
Re: Re: Re:
Categorical resolutions are signs of very deluded people whose beliefs form their judgement before comprehending the details. It is a most unfortunate position to take!
You need to respect your counterparts enough to argue constructively!
Btw. Who said I defend the laws as they exist? I would argue that the arguments for pretty significant changes are very explicit.
Re: Re:
“The time has changed and non-standard licensing (anything using ie. “free to share”), remixing, higher order licensing and some creators not selling their economic rights, are examples of issues the laws were never formed around and several of these were likely never even considered feasible when the rights were formed. “
This sounds like more sarcasm. So what do you propose, that all artists should be forced to sell their copy’rights’ to publishers at whatever price the publishers want? Is that somehow going to help content creators not be taken advantage of by publishers?
If artists want to freely license content to everyone to freely use then how is denying them that option helping them accomplish what they want? How is denying artists the ability to exercise their own freewill supposed to help them accomplish their goals?
What you want to do is to take away the rights of artists to do what they want in favor of forcing them to do what you want. You don’t care about artists and you are in no position to take the moral high ground. You have absolutely no regard for morality and are only self interested (assuming your post isn’t sarcasm which is hard to tell).
Re: Re: Re:
“What you want to do is to take away the rights of artists to do what they want in favor of forcing them to do what you want. You don’t care about artists and you are in no position to take the moral high ground. You have absolutely no regard for morality and are only self interested (assuming your post isn’t sarcasm which is hard to tell).”
That’s a hefty presumption there. You forget that to grant artists those rights, they had to take them away from the public. So, to use your own argument: You don’t care about the public and you are in no position to take the moral high ground. You have absolutely no regard for the freedom of speech and are only self interested.
Don’t pretend that arguing that copyright is broken means robbing people of their freedom. Freedom was taken away when copyright law was written, presumably, to promote the creation and distribution of more useful works for the public to assimilate.
Copyright was a compromise between the public and the author in order to form a mutual exchange of one benefit for another. As time went on, one side gained more and the other lost more. But, fortunately, technology caught up to copyright and has made great strides in returning to the public what was lost and even making it evident that in an environment of ubiquitous copying, copyright is not only ineffective at serving its intended purpose, it actually inhibits it.
Re: Re: Re:
Not sarcasm, satire! It is intended as somewhat descriptive of flaws in the existing system…
Seems the artistic sides of writing doesn’t do well on the internet. Particularly not on subjects where peoples feelings get in the way of actual reading comprehension.
This could be done even faster…
“Do what the public demands”
Who needs copyright if it doesn’t serve their own interests? Reduce copyright to 30 minutes and see what happens. Prove to the public that corporate interests need copyright, not that the public needs to have more.
Re: Re:
Mission Impossible was on last night, so I will use that as a simple example.
the budget for that movie was $80 million dollars, the only way that money would be made available to make that movie is with the expectation that they will be able to earn AT LEAST THAT, and then some on the cost of making the movie.
if Paramount Pictures did not have some protection on that investment in the form of copyright, to help ensure at lest the cost of the movie is covered, then IT WOULD NOT GET MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE….
simple as that, reduce copyright to 30 minutes and see what happens, it would be the day all quality content ceased to be created.
Re: Re: Re:
‘…it would be the day all quality content ceased to be created.
Incorrect. It may be the day studio/label content ceased to be created, because they didn’t have a way to control it, but quality content(of which they are increasingly a small amount), would continue to be created just fine.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don’t think it would even be that.
Re: Re: Re:
So let’s break down…
Hollywood Accounting ensures that the movies never reach the public domain. They make money for studios which will never reach the public domain so long as copyright exists.
Yet, people make movies and series despite the investments in Hollywood. Hell, I create content for people in regards to political discussions on my blog and YouTube channel. I put my stuff in the public domain similar to Techdirt so that people can spread the knowledge.
And hour long presentations take time to research and present.
The quality is in the presentation and I can make movies with a Nikon camera, a group of friends and some cardboard if need be.
So here’s my question… Where is copyright needed? Why should I worry about a movie studio that made billions as if their profits represent the entirety of movie making in the US?
Re: Re: Re:
Your first problem is calling “Mission Impossible” quality content. It’s total crap.
The second problem is that Paramount spent $80 million on the movie only because they knew they could make even more than that, not because the movie actually cost that much. They know they can make that much not because of copyright, but because film distribution is tightly controlled by the studios and they know how easy it is to cram Tom Cruise in a TV remake down the throats of a clueless public with a massive marketing campaign.
Even if anyone could freely copy “Mission Impossible” (and right now I can go pick it up at my public library and make a copy) that wouldn’t affect the $458 million it made in theaters around the world, so nobody is going to lose any money due to lack of copyright.
If lack of copyright actually destroyed their market, I’m not going to cry that they have to go make real quality content for a lot less money, like the $5 million it cost to make “Moon”, a far better film.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
If one industry didn’t need copyright, it’s cinema. Film reels were made to be mass produced, thus easily copied. It’s the cinema distribution and presentation scheme that made them money. However, given that their distribution historically wasn’t all that secure, it was mostly a matter of presentation. If the movies were as valuable as studios claimed, reels would have been delivered in armored cars with small squad of armed guards.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Also wanted to add that movie production cost are largely inflated with expenses such as “distribution” and “marketing” fees that studios charge to production companies are almost entirely paid to themselves and used to keep them as “unprofitable” for as long as possible. It’s also why studios are so big on various “tiers” for releases–cinema, pay-per-view, DVD etc.–so that they can double, triple and quadruple dip from the movie’s profits with the same fees over and over. As long as the production is in the red, the studio doesn’t have to pay royalties.
This is why no sane person would allow a media production and distribution company also handle receipts and manage the accounts.
Re: Re: Re:
That is not the only way of funding a film, alternatives like crowd funding, or making it for advertising supported TV also exist. Further They could base their marketing on a prime market that cannot be easily duplicated like big screen cinema!
Re: Re: Re: Re:
For now, it is doubtful that crowdfunding could bring in $80m. Record on Indiegogo is less than $13m and the record on Kickstarter is less than $11m. Advertising supported TV would likely not accept single segments to be that expensive outside of live sports. The most expensive TV-series was afaik. “Friends” with about $10m per episode at some point.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
crowdfunding campaigns are basically dvd only movie release, the project may go on to get ADDITIONAL funding from liciencing it to other channels but that not an apples to apples comparison. Show me a 80 million dollar direct to dvd movie then you can talk about it not being good enough.
Until then you need to compare the Direct to DVD projects to crowdfunding because bigger projects (veronica mars movie) also get bucket load of money from other sources too.
and you would need to add all of those proceeds into the pot to accurately judge their total funding.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
For now, it is doubtful that crowdfunding could bring in $80m. Record on Indiegogo is less than $13m and the record on Kickstarter is less than $11m.
When you have something totally original you don’t need $80 mil to make a great return $60,000 can bring home the bacon
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blairwitchproject.htm
Re: Re: #27
A quick search couldn’t get the box office returns for Mission Impossible, so I’ll settle for #3’s wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_III#Box_office
… so MI therefore made over 400 million in theatres. With a cost of 80 million, that’s a 500% return on investment. Clearly, a single-year copyright period is sufficient for movies (/sarcasm).
Re: Re: Re:
If quality works would not be made by professional creators due to the fact that there was not protection on the investment made by the producers of those works then how exactly did quality works get made before copyright existed? Investment in ANY business venture is a gamble and most business investments do not have any sort of protection built into the system, yet investors still invest in them. Some of them succeed and some of them fail. Protection isn’t necessary. What is necessary is an indication of the likelihood of success. Protection adds to that indication but is not in and of itself necessary. So your assertion that the movie wouldn’t have been made without protection is categorically false. If the protection had not been in place, the indication of the likelihood of success might still been high enough that the investment would still have been made.
Re: Re: Re:
Even if what you claim is true ask me how much I care. I do not care. I don’t want to sacrifice my natural right to freely copy whatever I want and do whatever I want with it just to subsidized your entertainment. If you and others like you want the movie to be made then you pay for it yourselves voluntarily. Don’t make me and others forcefully subsidize your entertainment at the expense of our natural right to freely copy and at the expense of service providers, such as Megaupload among others, making those service providers less capable of providing me with better services.
Re: Re: Re:
80 Million Dollars? No way. You’re not taking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting into account..
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You are forgetting that the stars do take it into account, and demand that they are highly paid up front. The millions that they demand soon add up.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
In which case the ‘stars’ either take a massive pay cut, or some newer actors get their shot. Movies don’t have to include star studded casts, if the movie is good enough, it’ll get along just fine with less well known actors, and that right there would drop the productions costs enormously.
Re: Re: You've already lost.
This is funny because when you said Mission Impossible, I thought you meant the original. It didn’t initially occur to me that you meant the the remake. What you are talking about is already a 2nd generation copy of the original.
You could reduce future copyrights to only 30 minutes and I couldn’t care less because there’s already 7 seasons of the original Mission Impossible that were produced. Those are better and I am much more inclined to pay real money for them.
Meanwhile, the 2nd generation remake is Walmart bargain bin fodder.
The free market and the current set of rules already aren’t doing that movie much good.
Re: Re: Re:
“Mission Impossible was on last night, so I will use that as a simple example.
the budget for that movie was $80 million dollars, the only way that money would be made available to make that movie is with the expectation that they will be able to earn AT LEAST THAT, and then some on the cost of making the movie.
if Paramount Pictures did not have some protection on that investment in the form of copyright, to help ensure at lest the cost of the movie is covered, then IT WOULD NOT GET MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE…. “
WRONG. Absolutely, categorically WRONG. Copyright is NOT needed to make money or have a successful movie. There are MANY ways. The movie theater, for example, provides its own unique and specialized experience for watching movies. Running a movie at a theater and charging money for it (or, like today, 4000-5000 of them) DOES NOT REQUIRE COPYRIGHT, not even one little bit. YOU could do this RIGHT NOW with your local theater (assuming you can convince a small local theater to run your movie) and copyright would be neither a barrier nor an enabler of your ability to do so. Hollywood was BUILT on owning the theaters and running movies in them. Hollywood was BUILT on VIOLATING copyrights and patents (they moved to Hollywood to be as far away from Edison as possible, while outright stealing and using his tech to make movies without ONE DROP of payment to him). So don’t swing in here with your “COPYRIGHT IS THE ONLY WAY!!” HORSESHIT, because it’s just a load of garbage.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“WRONG. Absolutely, categorically WRONG. Copyright is NOT needed to make money or have a successful movie. There are MANY ways. The movie theater, for example, provides its own unique and specialized experience for watching movies. Running a movie at a theater and charging money for it (or, like today, 4000-5000 of them) DOES NOT REQUIRE COPYRIGHT, “
nice rant, but wrong in so many ways.
It requires copyright, otherwise the theater would get the film, bang off a few dozen copies, and run it in their other theaters WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. Why would they, if there was nothing binding them to do so?
Basically, without copyright, as soon as a single copy was out, it would be a field day. The studio could try to keep it only places they like, but there would be no legal basic for others not to use a copy to make money and pay the studio nothing.
Re-read your post and think about it in realistic terms, and you might actually learn something.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Reported, you fucktard.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Early Hollywood usually did NOT use Edison’s patents, they preferred superior experiment and film stock from competitors. The problem with Edison was that he considered all of those competitors patent infringers, and employed strongmen to heavily “persuade” movie producers and theaters from using competing experiment and film.
Tired of Edison’s harassment, many producers moved to a seduced plot in California where they could make movies however they wanted. However, they were always on the lookout for Edison’s men. When the men finally did come, the producers would “switch” to Edison cameras, even broken ones, to create the illusion of compliance.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
The situation with the studios and publishers now is similar. Whenever someone tries to create a business that pays creators directly, cutting out the middlemen publishers and studios, the industries majors cry infringement and employ all manors of strongarm tactics to extort high royalty fees, which are often undeserved and don’t get passed to most creators anyway, or drive them out of business entirely.
The same goes with any technology that is somehow “unsanctioned” by the old school industries. If doesn’t directly support them and their goals, it’s deemed wicked and must to stopped at all cost. It doesn’t matter if the technology actually helps creators or the public, they couldn’t care less about either. Rather ironically, many inside these commercial fiefdoms use the evil technology on a regular basis.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
and lets not forget that they make it harder for content creators by taking away distribution services, like Megaupload, and making it more difficult for distribution services to serve them (such as by bombarding Youtube with false takedown notices).
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Exactly
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
So they ran across the country because of Edison’s patent hounding ,but switched to Edison’s equipment when his people were looking sounds like piracy to me.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Considering that they never really used his company’s equipment, it’s not even remotely close to piracy.
Hell, you probably think those tropical drinks with rum and little plastic swords sound like piracy too.
Re: Re: Re:
Man, that time came and past quite a while ago.
When was the last original movie, it is just rehash the same movie over and over again.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Apparently they’re somehow running short on books and games to rehash.
Re: Re: Re:
two words for you open source
in a world where everyone can take and remix the created work again
you would have 80 million dollar movies. If the digital objects from iron man were openly available to use by any movie maker, how cheap do think it would make your own iron man movie.
the fact that you need 80 million dollars is equally a consequence of copyright and the requirement that you must PAY for every piece when you need to create something.
linux is superior to other os (windoz) because it free to extend and thousands of people do that for love and money.
Re: Re: Re:
if Paramount Pictures did not have some protection on that investment in the form of copyright, to help ensure at lest the cost of the movie is covered, then IT WOULD NOT GET MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE….
I agree. So what?
Right now, the duration of copyright is not (at least explicitly) infinite. The scope of protection is not boundless. Right now there are works which are not getting created and published because unless the author gets a copyright which explicitly lasts forever, which grants him all rights to the work without exception (no fair use, no first sale, no private performance or display, copyright on the idea and not just the expression, etc.) it isn’t worthwhile for him to create it.
And we, as a society, say, ‘So what?’ and don’t give in, because the price he wants is too high. No matter how amazing his work is, it isn’t worth that much.
If a good copyright law that maximally serves the public interest happens to decimate the movie industry so that $80 million movies no longer get made, then I am totally okay with that. Because good copyright law is more important than any particular work that might require bad copyright law.
simple as that, reduce copyright to 30 minutes and see what happens, it would be the day all quality content ceased to be created.
Wrong.
We used to have no copyright law at all, from the beginning of human history to about 300 years ago. And we did okay. We got lots of quality works, and lots of other works too. (Oh, and remember: copyright is about quantity, not quality.) If copyright terms were only 30 minutes long, we’d do alright, because lots of incentives for creating works exist aside from just copyright-related economic incentives. There’d have to be, really, given how worthless copyrights often are for artists.
@out_of_the_blue
“What a quandary is commenting on Techdirt! It’s a case of dumbed (as in foolish) if you do, or dumbed (as in silent) if you don’t!”
people like me appreciate your ‘voice’ thank you.
Moron
So many stupid points:
* If copyright is a welfare program for certain artists, than all property rights are a welfare program for the people who create it.
* Of course everyone is a creator and I don’t know a single copyright extremist who doesn’t believe that. Trust me. Everyone in Hollywood loves the idea that everyone can protect their work with copyright.
* Your definition of “fair use” is just about making the richie riches at GOOG richer. You want the big billionaires like Google to be able to swoop in and “remix” their work to start making money for the search engine barons.
The rest of your blather doesn’t seem to have much to do with copyright. Of course technology is a tool. When the printing press existed, people looked for a way to help artists and that’s why they embraced copyright.
If you want some statistics, take a look at how the piracy is destroying the marketplace for serious films. The folks at Sundance can’t get paid and that means we’ll only have vanity project paid for by rich people. (Your ideas are so anti-poor people, it makes me sick.)
You want to do what’s best for the public? How about letting the public control what happens to the photos they take? How about letting the public control their art? How about nurturing the kind of businesses that the public wants?
Re: Moron
Yes, because copyright is your saviour against the Chinese government’s leeching. 80% of the global piracy market and superpower strength to keep it that way? No problem! Copyright can solve all problems! You can TOTALLY control the Chinese government however you want!
No. What it does is ENABLE this regime to have this 80% piracy share by turning them into the Al-Capones of this prohibitionism. Kim Dotcom would also, similarly, want copyright to be in law so that he can benefit from the untaxed, unregulated rewards.
How do you stop them from stealing? Like all methods of fixing illegal monopolies as a result of unjust prohibition: stop the prohibition. They will suffer from a free-rider problem and will no longer be able to steal from the artists.
And all while the artists get filthy rich from crowdfunded support (which everyone – consumers and corporations alike – will have to turn to if they want their rewards).
That’s how you stop stealing. And that’s how you have a system of life, liberty and property that doesn’t overlap with the rights of derivative artists.
Re: Moron
Property rights exist because we as a society believe that we are better off with them than without. In that sense it’s not ‘welfare’ it’s serving a social good.
Likewise copy’right’ should exist only to the extent that it serves the public interest. Anything beyond that is simply welfare to copy’right’ holders and we don’t need to provide them with welfare, we already have a welfare system.
Re: Moron
“How about letting the public control what happens to the photos they take? How about letting the public control their art? How about nurturing the kind of businesses that the public wants?”
How about letting the public control our laws? How about nurturing democratically passed laws in opposed to laws passed behind closed doors by corporate lobbyists wanting more IP?
Re: Re: Moron
How about NO laws?
Re: Re: Re: Moron
have no laws and its the person with the biggest gun who’s rules you will have to follow.
Re: Re: Re:2 Moron
That depends entirely on your Sneak stat.
Re: Moron
When the printing press existed, people looked for a way to help artists and that’s why they embraced copyright.
Can’t you read? Copyright is specifically and explicitly for the benefit of the public. Period.
Per the frikkin’ Consitution:
I don’t think it could be spelled out any more clearly than that.
Re: Re: Moron
You missed the funniest part of that quote, the entire purpose behind copyright being introduced as the printing press spread was not to ‘help artists’, it was to control them(deja vu anyone?).
Copyright was introduced at that time for the sole purpose of control, so the state would be able to control who could print what, and what’s more, copyright in that period offered absolutely nothing to creators, all the protections were for the printing companies, it was only later on, when they wanted an expansion to the law that the Stationeer’s Guilds suddenly pretended to care about authors/creators, and were even willing to consider extending some of that ‘protection’ to the authors/creators.
Gotta love it when the maximalist crowd made claims like that without actually bothering to research the facts…
Re: Moron is what Moron does
“Of course technology is a tool.”
A hammer is a tool…. it hammers in nails
A screwdriver is a tool…it puts in or out screws
A car is a tool… it transports people
A computer is a tool.. It runs software
A camera is a tool … it takes photo’s.
A TECHNOLOGY is a tool… it (fill in here)??
Re: Re: Moron is what Moron does
This person was to some degree led down the primrose path by using the words of the artcle’s author. It would be better to direct your comment to the author (who would, of course, amend the article on this obvious point as doubtless technology was being used in a very general sense).
Re: Re: Moron is what Moron does
“A TECHNOLOGY is a tool… it (fill in here)??”
AND IT IS EVIL!! (of course, especially if its the internet)
Re: Re: Moron is what Moron does
A TECHNOLOGY is a tool… it makes things faster, stronger, better. Quite often for a lot less than Six Million Dollars, man.
Re: Re: Moron is what Moron does
All of the things you list are specific examples of technology. To say “technology is a tool” is just a convenient shorthand to avoid having to list all of the technologies.
Re: Moron
I have a news flash for you, bob. The printing press still exists.
Re: Moron
Re: Re: Moron
Uh, wrong, Jedidiah. It IS a virtual land grab because the act of declaring it to be property, then ring-fencing the property rights actually DENIES it to everyone, restricting access to the copyright holder and authorized agents alone.
The comment about never owning the source materials can equally be applied to creative works. You can’t own sounds but it’s reasonable to permit you to hold a temporary monopoly on the sale of sound patterns you have made for long enough to make some money off it, then release it to the public domain. That’s the deal we’re supposed to have.
The actual sound (e.g. a musical note) is not a thing you can own, as it’d still exist whether you were around or not. Music (pattern of sounds) is a different thing but again, you don’t own the source materials (note), but you can claim a temporary monopoly on the distribution of recordings of music you have composed.
Argue that if you will, but then you’d have to deny such a thing as influence and genres in music, all of which build upon each other to provide us with the rich variety of music that exists today.
“Technology is just a tool”. All these comments from OOTB, and he never says, “So is Mike”? Wow, OOTB, you’re slipping.
bob and out_of_the_blue just hate it when due process is enforced.
I think it’s worth repeating the basic framework for copyright reform I suggested last year, because not only does it still apply, it appears that Congress has shown no interest in following that framework.
Shocking! Yet another group fails to acknowledge your brilliance and fall in behind you.
Re: Re:
“I think it’s worth repeating the basic framework for copyright reform I suggested last year, because not only does it still apply, it appears that Congress has shown no interest in following that framework.
Shocking! Yet another group fails to acknowledge your brilliance and fall in behind you.”
I thought that was Mr Masnicks argument against copyright, “why create new stuff if you can profit off old stuff you made previously and make the same money?”
So nothing new is created, but the old stuff reused over and over again, less work more profit less created.
or do you have a right to profit of your previous works for as long as they provide you profit?
Re: Re: Re:
Considering that the vast majority of all currently copyrighted works make their entire profit margin within the first ten years, anything else is excessive, that’s where the line shouild be drawn, given the last line in your assertion.
“1.Pretty much everyone is both a content creator and a content consumer.”
Bullshit, no they are not, Mr Masnick what have you created in terms of content ? Made any movies recently? anything… (did not think so). false premise as usual.
____
2.Technology is just a tool.
So what ?? “It is neither a competitor to, nor an enemy of, content creators.”
again, so what. its a tool, so freaking what??
“With so many Representatives setting up the debate as “content vs. technology”
So why are you doing it??? do you have a disconnect with reality as well?
“As a tool, technology certainly can create challenges for existing and traditional business models,”
ok, show us some existing and traditional business models that do not use technology?
“To argue that this is tech vs. content, when the tech companies seem to be handing content creators the most useful tools they’ve ever had to be successful, seems ridiculous. “
again, so why do it?
_________
“3.Every legislative choice has costs and benefits.”
Again, your point is?
” Too often, it seems like those pushing a certain proposal like to only look at one side of that equation.”
And YOU would NEVER only look at one side of the equation!!
Legislation is not a cost benefit analysis.
yes, it might be a cost benefit for you to steal pirated content, but that does not mean it is right for you to do it, or that the law should be changed to accommodate theft.
cost benefit analysis would probably mean most people in prison would be released, because the cost of their crime to society would probably be less then the cost to punish them. Want them to move into your spare room?
__________
“4.Decisions need to be made based on empirical data.”
again, was this not your previous point, about ‘cost benefit’?
they did not make laws because of empirical data, you don’t make laws against theft, or murder because of how often it happens, you make the laws because those acts are inappropriate and unaccepted.
if you chose to use empirical data in regards to the number of successful movies, or music albums, or books written, you would have to agree that the status quo should remain.
How many popular movies have you created?? compared to how many you have downloaded?
_____
“5.Finally, and most importantly, the focus needs to remain on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.”
and finally, we should complete that statement. why don’t you add the last line??
you just explained how “most people are content creators”, and technology (science) has advanced significantly, so it would appear the present system is working perfectly, so we are promoting the progress and useful arts very well, YOU EMPIRICAL DATA shows that clearly.
You also want to protect the rights of those ‘creators’ (like youtube!!!!!) which is happening.
so really what is your problem again, the arts are being progressed, empirical data is being analysed, cost benefits are being don’t, science and technology is being advanced, the arts are being advanced, new technologies and industries are being protected, and lawbreakers are being convicted.
So explain again what is wrong with the system as it exists now?
did facebook, or Netflix or youtube need copyright reform to get to where they are now? clearly not empirical data would show they are doing VERY well, under the existing system they are able to work lawfully, and highly successfully, the arts and tech are progressing nicely, consumers are consuming, creators are creating, cost benefits are being analysed, science and useful arts are being promoted, and your problem is?
“Focus on what’s best for the public and it will also be best for creators and technologists alike. That’s how you “get copyright right.””
Focus on any one at the expense of the others.
you have just tried to explain to us that ‘the public’ IS the creators and the technologists (don’t know why you added ‘technologists’).
the public ARE the creators, someone who makes a movie is the public AND a creator, he is just not you, you appear to be saying if he creates a movie you are a public person has the right to copy it and not reward him for making it, (after all you could make it yourself), BUT YOU DID NOT MAKE IT YOURSELF, you don’t own it because it would be a cost benefit to you to own it, nor do you own it because you have access to the same technology he had to make it.
You also do not own it because it is so easy for you to copy it, nor do you own it because you purchased a legal copy of it.
You own the copy, you don’t own the copyright, you have the technology to create, yet you don’t create.
If you did not VALUE a movie you pirated and watched, then you would not of pirated it and watched it, these things have a cost and a value, admit it or not, you value these products, but want to justify not paying for it with ‘cost benefit analysis’ excuses, and “technology” excuses, fact if you value them on some level, thus your desire to pirate them.
its hypocritical to state “everyone creates” sure they much, but you don’t give a shit about what they create, you want the GOOD STUFF, the product of the “legacy industries” that’s what you want, lets be honest for a minute..
Re: #24
… considering that you’re commenting on an article written by the man… ummm…. I hate to break it to you…
That’s content. The stuff I wrote this morning in a collaborative story? That’s content. The rather mediocre teenage poetry I wrote a decade and a half ago? That’s content (not very good content, of course, but it is content).
Your post, even, is content. It’s not very much content, so as a practical matter it’s as if it wasn’t covered by copyright, but conceptually it is. John Cage’s 4’33” (four and a half minutes of silence) is content… although that one I really find somewhat silly (it resulted in a successful copyright lawsuit).
Re: Re:
So what have you created?
Sounds to me like you are trying to blame piracy for you total lack of talent. If you were any good, you would make money hand over fist.
Re: Re:
A bit too many selfcontradictions in this rant.
Claiming that others set up a wrong framing is hard to do without mentioning said framing. You are very ridiculous in all your arguments about technology as a tool. Facetious strawmanning and framing.
The legislative choice has costs and benefits part is actually somewhat interesting and could have teeth if you cared to elaborate instead of refusing the god of modern policy-making in an attempt to make Mike look bad and emotional legislation look cool.
Too many lawsuits have been leveraged against Youtube for you to claim with a straight face that they work fine inside the current copyright regime.
The best one: Mike is not a creator, but you end up granting that everybody creates. And you calling that hypocricy on Mikes part is priceless. 🙂
Thanks for some good entertainment, sir!
Re: Re: Re:
no he does not create anything of sufficient popularity or value that others feel the need to copy it or pirate it to their own advantage.
does masnick create, no.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually, techdirt has been copied wholesale on several occasions. I seem to recall that at least one of them where sloppy enough to leave all the links back to old TD stories 🙂
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Okay, this has got to be a Poe, you can’t be this clueless accidentally, claiming someone hasn’t created anything of ‘sufficient popularity’ on a site they created, and one that gets millions of hits every year.
Seriously, the very platform you’re commenting on disproves your point, next time put at least a minimum of thought into your ‘argument’ before posting it.
Not all so obvious
1. I am sometimes a driver, sometimes a pedestrian. It doesn’t mean that as a driver I can ignore the cross walks, or that as a pedestrian I can walk in the middle of the road. We have different roles and we work with different rules when we are in them. It’s not about being a different class, it’s about being in a different situation at a different time. Humans are remarkable in their ability to be multi-dimensional, why make the rules as if we are cardboard cutouts?
2. Technology is a tool, nobody argues that. What is argued is that a technology that erodes right on either side is unfair. You have been railing against NSA and the various backdoors they have installed – yet that is just technology. Since technology permits it, we should allow it, right? These technologies have been embraced by the spy agency to better reach out and do their thing. Why get upset? Perhaps it’s understanding that while technology per se is agnostic, it’s application and use isn’t.
3. in the world of costs and benefits, you have to understand that modern governments work not only on a moral level (good and bad) but also on the bottom line (income) way. The combined IP industries generate huge amounts of tax income, jobs, and the like. They also tend to be what drives much of the “new” technology companies – after all, if you didn’t have a big collection of music or movies, would you really need to have a huge backup system? Drop all the IP off the internet for a few days and tell me what you have left, it would be mostly like an empty shopping mall.
4. Suggesting changing a system used worldwide to be almost the complete opposite of the current system, with the promise of “great advancements” sounds entirely faith based. We have no history in the last few hundred years without copyright and patents in play. There are some theories that changing it might be good, but so far, it all fails point number 3 above.
5. The focus is always on progress and promoting the arts, the difference is the time frame under which it is promoted. Your ideas tend to be very short term (there will be a whole bunch of innovation when we get rid of patents), based on profiting from what has (in your opinion) been held back. Yet, there is nothing out there to suggest that there would be long term benefits for society in doing so. We might get a small speed pickup for a year or two as the patent pool is drained, but will there we longer term benefit? There is little out there to support it. Since much of the world works with patents and copyrights, those studies that look at the few that don’t or who ignore it. Yet there is no simple way to create a functional data set because most of these countries work by leeching off the advances and work of others.
Most of the data points to lagging countries who pull themselves forward at a fast rate by weak or non existent IP laws. Yet, it only works because the IP strong countries have moved forward and created all of this content and processes to work from. When it comes time to actually move forward on their own, they tend to stumble and slide – and they suddenly move to become strong IP defenders for their own hard fought advances. Japan is a perfect example, and China is going down a very similar path. India is likely next. Their advancements wouldn’t happen if someone else hadn’t already done the development for them. So there is little to point to that would actually show LONG TERM AND SUSTAINABLE BENEFITS FROM REMOVING OR NEUTERING COPYRIGHT OR PATENTS. Quite the opposite, there would seem to be mostly a real benefit in finding ways to share the content and patents with the third world in a manner that brings them up, not in a manner that drags the rest of us down to their level.
“After I posted this last time, I had two lobbyists accuse me of being insane (literally — they claimed I had mental deficiencies) for daring to suggest that everyone is both a creator and a content consumer. “
You aren’t insane, you are just seemingly unable to consider that we have more than one role in life. You are both a father and a son, you can do both at the same time. You are both a business owner and a customer, and so on. You can be more than one thing, and your position (and the rules that apply to you) change as you change positions. You can be a player in a sport today, and be a coach tomorrow, or even a referee. The rules that apply as you take the role changes. If you entire argument is that humans are incapable of being and doing different things, then perhaps the lobbyists evaluation wasn’t that far off the mark. It’s not insanity, perhaps more just a case of trying to simplify things to the point that they no longer make any real sense.
(oh, and thanks for continuing to put my posts on hold for days at a time. I appreciate the the best way to make this site work for you is to block and deny opinions that oppose you with logic and consideration, while allowing people like OOTB post openly because your followers will shout him down easily. I appreciate that your stands for free speech and the first amendment don’t apply on your own site, it shows a certain level of “do as I say, not do as I do” mentality that sums it all up nicely!)
Re: Not all so obvious
I think much of your arguments hinge on point 3 and I would say that it is pretty hard to defend the analogy without defining it in more detail (how can you rip the internet of content? That is absurd!).
Conflating patents and copyright is a terrible thing to do: Ie. on computer programs copyright works ok, while patenting is not as well-liked. When preaching multi-dimensional undertanding, any kind of inconsistencies in what you lump together is a problem. The solution to a multi-dimensional problem obviously has to be multi-dimentional too, which precludes this kind of generalisation. Practice what you preach!
I am not gonna defend this OP or this sites redacting policy. I will just point out that much of what he writes is political. In policy there are two sides. Arguing that Mike want that or this is hard to say since you only have a starting point and a direction. Therefore talking about “significant changes” and “drop all” thought-experiments could be said to be strawmanning given he doesn’t put much out there about how exactly he wants it to land!
Apart from that it is a good post.
Re: Not all so obvious
2. Technology is a tool, nobody argues that. What is argued is that a technology that erodes right on either side is unfair. You have been railing against NSA and the various backdoors they have installed – yet that is just technology. Since technology permits it, we should allow it, right? These technologies have been embraced by the spy agency to better reach out and do their thing. Why get upset? Perhaps it’s understanding that while technology per se is agnostic, it’s application and use isn’t.
The amount of wrong in this theory of your’s is astounding. There is a huge difference at work, here. You are conflating the creation of new laws to block a technology because someone doesn’t like it with the use of new technology in ways that violate one of the basic tenants of our entire system of government.
Ya know, I’m… just sayin’…
I like that. It has the ring of truth about it. However copyright laws have gotten so twisted up that even those who paid to get their laws through lobbying are often caught up in infringement.
The sad part about it is if you have the money then you don’t so much need to obey the law. Politicians are constantly caught up in this during campaigns. About every other campaign, there is some politician who is using music they didn’t license. Mainly because it’s culture that the law has been twisted around for the benefit of the industry. Nor is that the only place this happens a lot. The industry itself often gets caught up in using some great idea of someone else who put it to paper and market and then the industry basically robbed them. My point is the infringement is not equal in punishment between all content creators.
The majority of the time, those in the copyright industry such as the labels are not creators. They exist solely as a vampire industry, sucking all the money out of it but returning damn little.
It’s high time that copyright laws were returned to their original intent. Nothing you hear today will ever be in public domain while you are alive. Nor is there any requirement that the industry that jealously guards all these properties ever hold it in good condition towards the day that it does turn to public domain to give the public a pristine copy.
Re: Re:
Politicians don’t need to license the music they use at public events, and in cases where they do, it is usually a compulsory license that the musician can’t refuse (and no permission needs to be asked.)
Re: Re: Re:
“Politicians don’t need to license the music they use at public events, and in cases where they do”
You are confused aren’t you !!!! Kind of says it all..
What is a fair resolution?
I think the whole spirit of Copyright in its inception at the time of the writing of the Constitution was striking a fair balance between allowing creators to have limited exclusive access to their works, and allowing those works to expire in a reasonable time frame to allow the public to benefit.
However, today we are stuck in a position where Copyright is the life of the author + 70 years if I am not mistaken. So we might as well say two lifetimes here. I don’t think thats reasonable IMO, and its mind boggling how that law ever got passed.
I think allowing Copyright to last 50-60 years with no extensions is fair….we have to give creators a reasonable time to benefit from their works, but we also have allow those works to benefit the public at some reasonable point in time.
Everyone knows thought there is a massive lobbying effort that goes on with this, so its doubtful any real common sense type of reforms are going to happen anytime soon sadly.
Re: What is a fair resolution?
I’d suggest rolling the duration back to (at most)the 28 years, plus 28 years with a renewal it used to be at one point. Offers plenty of time to make money off of a creation, while ensuring that the work enters the public domain in a sane time duration, and if the data from back then follows the same pattern, most works won’t be seen as valuable enough to bother to renew the copyright on, so in most cases the copyright would only last the initial 28 years.
Another desperate needed change would be rolling the laws back so that if you want a copyright on something, it must be registered.
Give people say 5 years to provide proof of ownership and register their works, and that change right there would do a world of good, almost completely wiping out the ‘orphaned works’ problem, as if it wasn’t registered after that point, that means either the creator wasn’t alive anymore, or didn’t care enough about the work to bother with it, meaning it would be in the public domain.
Re: What is a fair resolution?
With a connected world with a population of over 7 billion people, if you cannot turn a profit within 1 year, you are never going to turn a profit.
If you have several attempts and cannot turn a profit within 1 year, then you are in the wrong industry and obviously do not have the talent or the capabilities.
its about who profits, anyone except the creator of the content
it appears you don’t really care that profits are made from content, but you seem very interested in making sure that the creators of the content do not profit, but the companies you support make all the profit.
consider Youtube, public generated content and not bound by copyright.
So you Mr Masnick create some content, you upload it to Youtube and it goes viral.
50 million view a day !!
Youtube place an add before your clip advertising life insurance.
Even if you click through you have to watch 6 to 10 seconds of an add for a company.
Youtube go to that company and tell them their add is being viewed 50 million times a day for the past 3 days, therefore GIVE US A PILE OF MONEY.
Youtube then writes a large cheque to the creator of that content as their part of the profit !!!!! OH WAIT.
Forget that last bit, Youtube KEEPS ALL THAT MONEY, what is the creator of the content paid ???? squat that’s what.
A friend of yours sees that your video went viral, so he makes a copy of it, he posts that copy on Youtube, does that copy make the same income for Youtube and the insurance company as your original upload ? Does he get a fat cheque of Youtube for making that copy of your content available.
What method or mechanism leads to rewarding the person creating the content for it, and why should Google (youtube) take all the profit from your efforts ?
so its not that you don’t mind people profiting off works, you just hate the idea that the creator of the works should be allowed to profit from it, but its ok for Google, or Kim Dotcom to profit. ONLY IF YOU CREATE IT ARE YOU NOT ALLOWED TO PROFIT FROM IT…
So, do I have it right so far, if not then you explain it?
Re: its about who profits, anyone except the creator of the content
Seems like a lot of the people on Youtube whose videos go viral are using that success to get jobs that pay money or enable them to do what they want to do – because as hard as it might be for famous people to make money, it’s nearly impossible for people who aren’t famous.
If what you say is true, then nobody would upload anything to Youtube, which obviously isn’t the case. And all of them are hoping their videos go viral.
Re: Re: its about who profits, anyone except the creator of the content
so you readily admit they don’t get a cent from Youtube, who keeps it all, fame is not an assurance of money, and a dancing cat is not going to land you a high paid job !!!
people certainly do not upload to Youtube for money or profit. Is the only reason you do things (ANYTHING) is so you can make money and profit?
Re: Re: Re: its about who profits, anyone except the creator of the content
Indeed, why it’s not like there are people making a living off of the money they get from Youtube-
Oh, wait, except that there are in fact people who make enough money off of youtube that posting videos is essentially their day job. This is not to say that they don’t enjoy what they’re doing, I doubt they’d put that much effort into their videos if they didn’t, but they can certainly both make a living off of it, and enjoy doing so at the same time.
Next argument.
Re: its about who profits, anyone except the creator of the content
There is another flaw in your YouTube example. A great many of the ads that you are referring to are placed before the videos not by Google but rather copyright holders (or at least those claiming to hold a copyright to at least some part of the content) which then do get paid by Google based on the number of views. It’s a system that was set up by Google to directly benefit the copyright holders that was created for them to appease their complaints that they were not getting paid for the use of their content.
False premises
two of them, the first is this thing about owning the copyright is the reason for the income or profits, people who own the copyright don’t make their money from the copyright itself, they make their money because what they own is of value to others, would could have millions of things copyrighted, but if they are all rubbish and no one wanted them you would not make a cent from the fact that they are copyrighted.
You don’t get an automatic cheque in the mail each week because you own the copyright to something, the copyright itself is not measure of any possible income derived from that work.
second, ‘copyright is a monopoly’, no its not, again if you have a work that no one wants and you own the copyright for it, its a copyright on something no one wants, you cannot have a monopoly on things no one values or wants (I can get them anywhere).
So copyrighted or not if no one values them or wants them, being copyrighted makes no difference.
So you argument seems to be that if you want something you should be able to have it? Regardless of who owns it, if you consider it of value and you want it, you should be free to have it!
or is it that you see other people getting value from something, and think “why not me too?”, after all why should the person who created it (or funded its creation) profit from his efforts and not you.
what great movies has Kim Dotcom created recently? yet he appears to profit handsomely off the creations of others, so making a profit is ok, as long as the creators are chopped out of the loop, all is good.
Re: False premises
What great movies did Netflix make before House of Cards? None. They just profited off the works of others.
Re: Re: False premises
You can still have a monopoly on your shit that nobody wants because it is shit. The fact that nobody wants it because it is shit doesn’t change the fact that you have a monopoly on it.
Re: Re: Re: False premises
no you cant, I can get shit I don’t value or don’t want from an infinite number of sources, no monopoly exists on shit I don’t want or value.
Re: Re: Re:2 False premises
a monopoly, (as you don’t know), is having things YOU NEED and REALLY WANT, but you can only get them from one source.
If you don’t need or want that thing it cannot be a monopoly !!! Sheesh…
Re: Re: Re:3 The Dictionary: Not just for Scrabble games
No, no it really isn’t. If you’re going to make sweeping statements like that, it would help if you’d look up the actual definitions of the words first.
As a refresher:
Monopoly
noun, plural monopolies.
1.exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. Compare duopoly, oligopoly.
2.an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.
3.the exclusive possession or control of something.
4.something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.
5.a company or group that has such control.
You may notice, looking over the list, that no-where does it list or even mention ‘value’, since it doesn’t matter if the service/commodity in question is the most valuable and sought after in the world, or something no-one would ever want, sole control of it still counts as a monopoly.
Re: Re: Re:3 False premises
A monopoly is defined by having a singular source of control over supply. It has absolutely nothing to do with demand or the lack thereof.
Re: Re: False premises
Actually, they didn’t even make that. They paid people to make it for them. So while you are at it why don’t we add every publisher, record label, and movie studio to that list of entities that profit off of the works of others since profiting off of the works of others is now inherently bad apparently.
Re: False premises
What great movie has the MPAA ever made?
Re: Re: False premises
MPAA is not a content creator, it is a content creators protector, but I am sure many member of the MPAA have made many movies that you deem valuable enough to steal.
oh yes, MPAA members include:
Paramount Pictures
Sony Pictures
Twentieth Century Fox
Universal
Warner Bros
and a large cast of others.
so I would say they have made quite a few great movies, great as in popular, profitable and desired to be stolen by freetards.
Re: Re: Re: False premises
“deem valuable enough to steal.”
Actually that’s why we download them, they don;t have much value.
Re: Re: Re: False premises
Stolen? Really? The only way a movie can actually be “stolen” is to either take the master copies, forcing the studio to re-edit or even reshoot the film, or to take the studio to court and convince a judge (and a few appeals judges) that the copyright and film itself be forfeited.
I never heard of a major master reel heist. And if the movies were really that valuable, the masters would be locked up like Fort Knox. The fact that their security isn’t all that great says a lot. Theft by judge might happen on occasion, but that’s the magic of Imaginary Property. If you can create the strong illusion that someone else’s real property belongs to you, you can have the state steal it for you.
Re: Re: Re:2 Stolen? Piracy?
Yeah, I was thinking of software piracy. I figured it would need some 20 armed guys, ideally a helicopter to drop off some of them on the roof, and get in at maybe 5 in the evening, in the hope most developers would be there then.
Then quickly subdue any people in the software company, get the safe opened and all passwords for their servers at gunpoint, take any and all media probably containing source-code, and make sure they don’t have it any more.
And finally, give the developers the chance to join the pirates or march the plank.
Now THAT would be software piracy!
Re: Re: Re:3 Stolen? Piracy?
arrrr
Re: Re: Re:3 Stolen? Piracy?
I’d love to see something like this made into a short film, as a satirical counter-argument against the misuse of “theft” and “piracy” in copyright discussions.
Re: Re: Re:2 False premises
I never heard of a major master reel heist. And if the movies were really that valuable, the masters would be locked up like Fort Knox.
I think you just wrote Oceans 14 script , becareful hollywood is listening.
Re: Re: Re: False premises
the mpaa was created for the purpose of self censorship so they could keep the government out of their films ..it wasn’t until many years later they created a lobby ,for copyright issues ..fyi the mpaa doesn’t police our tax dollars have the honor of doing just that.
Re: Re: False premises
its the same as you asking “what spying has the US Government done”, you argument is none, because its the NSA that does the spying.
Unless you can understand the NSA IS the US Government, you cannot understand MPAA IS paramount, Sony, Universal etc.
Re: Re: Re: False premises
And that is why they forward on all of the money that they have won in their recent court cases on to the actors, the camerapeople, the sound engineers?
The same thing can be said for Kim Dotcom. He created a valuable service for content creators that was being used by content creators. Yet your legacy MPAA caused the site to be shuttered illegally and all of his assetts stolen by a corrupt government.
Re: False premises
second, ‘copyright is a monopoly’, no its not
Sure it is. A person who holds a copyright can prevent other people from doing certain things with regard to the work as to which the copyright pertains. Then, they can charge prices for, e.g. copies of the work, which are greater than could be had in a free market for that work.
There’s an old joke that a man asked a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars. She said she would. Then he asked if she’d sleep with him for one dollar. She said she wouldn’t, and was insulted that the man thought she was some sort of prostitute. The man replied that they had already established that she was willing to whore herself out, and now they were just dickering over the price.
Copyright is a monopoly; that’s the essence of the thing. Whether it is worth a lot or worth a little or worthless altogether is just a question of price.
So you argument seems to be that if you want something you should be able to have it? Regardless of who owns it, if you consider it of value and you want it, you should be free to have it!
That certainly would be an ideal world. Just think: Anyone who wanted a feast would get one. Anyone who wanted a fabulous mansion would get one. Even if everyone wanted it to be built in the same spot, they’d all get their own, each one built in the same place as all the others.
Obviously that’s not possible in the world we live in. Real and personal property suffers from the evil of rivalry: that for one person to have more of something, another person must have less. We can’t all have a house built on the same spot, because that spot is only big enough for one house at a time.
Creative works, OTOH, don’t suffer from rivalry. My use of and enjoyment of a story does not lessen anyone else’s use of or enjoyment of the very same story. If someone else copies my story verbatim, I am left no worse off than I was before, and someone else has gained something, which is surely a cause for celebration.
We may not be able to live in such a paradise, but we should certainly recognize how great it would be, and should do our utmost to try to get as close to that as we can.
Why does copyright protection – as well as patents – have to be a “one size fits all” system? Why not a tiered system, based on the cost to produce, as well as the economic lifespan of the work?
As things like weather forecasts and investment advice become obsolete very quickly, why do such things need to remain under automatic copyright protection for a century?
Also, why is copyright the ONLY form of property that is not heavily taxed — or even taxed at all?
Re: Re:
A cost-based system would incentivize people and companies to artificially jack up the ‘production costs'(more than they already do anyway), giving a greater benefit to larger players, or those more willing to game the system, while handing less to smaller players.
Basing copyright duration on economic lifespan in general might work, but doing it on an individual basis would be a nightmare to keep track of, not to mention also be fairly easy to game.
As for the last part of your comment, if you want to have fun, anytime someone starts defending copyright laws as they currently stand, by claiming that IP is no different than any other property, and therefor deserving of the same protections(or more in most cases), just point out that if IP is property, it’s only right it should be taxed as any other form of property as well, and watch ’em squirm as they try and have their cake and eat it too, suddenly arguing that it should only be treated as property when it comes to the good perks property ownership grants, yet should not be treated as property when it comes to the downsides, like taxation.
Re: Re: Re:
Since compared to hard goods, intellectual property has a rather high “maintenance cost” – borne largely by taxpayers – how about a federal tax on all IP-intensive industries, such as movie studios and record labels, of say 2% of gross sales? The money would help compensate the cost of policing, investigating and prosecuting infringement as well as the cost of pressuring foreign countries to do likewise. (Not that the force of law should be used to prop up outdated business models, but at least the taxpayers would get a break.)
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Only if I can pay just 2% tax as well. If Corporations are people, they should pay the same tax as a person.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“Since compared to hard goods, intellectual property has a rather high “maintenance cost” – borne largely by taxpayers “
what ?? explain that please, just saying something does not make it true, does the Government sent out “Copyright cheques” each week ?
Who polices copyright, and who pays for it? THE FREAKING COPYRIGHT OWNER, MPAA is an example of the copyright owners having a policing authority (that THEY PAY FOR) to enforce copyright.
Its not a cost borne by the taxpayer, having copyright is no assurance of ANY INCOME from that copyright EVER.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Who polices copyright, and who pays for it? THE FREAKING COPYRIGHT OWNER, MPAA is an example of the copyright owners having a policing authority (that THEY PAY FOR) to enforce copyright.
Who pays to keep the copyright office open (Taxpayers) , who’s money was spent chasing kim dotcom (I personally don’t like the guy)to the other side of the world. (Taxpayers)
How many man hours are put in by our government protecting copyright to many to count .. That’s a whole hell of a lot of money paid out by the John and Jane Doe Taxpayers.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Who polices copyright? The FBI, it says so on every commercial DVD movie sold today. Who pays for it? The taxpayer via the federal income tax.
Re: Re: Re:
why should creators of high quality low budget movies be punished and disadvantaged?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Because apparently, they’re stealing not only the silverware, but also the wife, kids and your soul.
Re: Re: Re:
Basing copyright duration on economic lifespan in general might work, but doing it on an individual basis would be a nightmare to keep track of, not to mention also be fairly easy to game.
I don’t think so. Let’s just use self-reporting.
Require copyrights to be registered for published works, where publication is inclusive of public performance and display as well as the deposit required to register. If a work is published sans copyright, it is automatically in the public domain. (This is how it used to be, until the 1976 Act)
However, given the number of works created and published simultaneously (e.g. wire reports of breaking news) or very contemporaneously (e.g. typical blog posts), we might allow a grace period of, say, 30 days to register, with lesser remedies against infringers during that time period to encourage timely registration.
After this, require renewals annually, up to some maximum number of renewals, which might vary depending on the type of work. (E.g. Four renewals for software, but nineteen renewals for an audiovisual work)
Registration and renewal both involve simple but essential paperwork (such as contact information for the copyright holder) and a token fee.
If an author fails to register, the work enters the public domain straight away. If the author registers but fails to renew at some point when he has that option, then presumably it’s no longer worthwhile to him to bother. We can infer from that that the economic lifespan has passed the point where the value of the work is less than the value of the fee plus the value of the transactional cost of filing the simple paperwork.
Back when we had registration and renewal, most works failed to get registered, and most registered works failed to get renewed. I would only like to see more granularity, so that we don’t have to wait 14 to 28 years before a registered work hits the public domain due to a disinterested copyright holder.
This leaves us just with a question as to term length for unpublished works. We want it to be something, so that people don’t pirate manuscripts and unfinished works in advance of when they’re ready to be published. But not too long, so that authors don’t just sit on it — eventually even a pirated work is better than no work at all. Twenty years with minimal remedies against all but the first infringer and those who acted in concert with him? I’m open to ideas.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
While good points, and backing up the idea that copyright should require registration for it to be enforceable, you seem to have misunderstood the point I was trying to make.
When I mentioned ‘on an individual basis’, I was talking about the suggestion of basing the copyright duration on the ‘economic value and/or lifespan’ of the work which the AC suggested, which would require determining just how ‘valuable’ a work was, and then doing that thousands, if not millions of times each year.
‘Complete and utter pandemonium’ would probably not overstate the mess a system like that would cause. You’d have to figure out the value of the work, and then decide how long the copyright should be, based upon that value. Then what if the ‘value’ changes, by say becoming more or less popular? Does the duration increase, does it decrease, how does the change affect the original duration? All of which would need to be recorded, for every single work. The complexity of such a system would make the tax system look like something a pre-schooler came up with in comparison.
Now, basing copyright duration on the economic worth, or how long it takes before the worth of a creation peaked and started going down, that could be a feasible way of doing it, but only if it was done categorically, so books as a whole would get one duration, movies another, different categories of software their own duration, and so on.
That was what I was trying to point out.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
When I mentioned ‘on an individual basis’, I was talking about the suggestion of basing the copyright duration on the ‘economic value and/or lifespan’ of the work which the AC suggested, which would require determining just how ‘valuable’ a work was, and then doing that thousands, if not millions of times each year.
Yes, and all I’ve suggested is outsourcing that to the copyright holders themselves, who are in the best position to make this determination in any event.
The broad parameters are set as policy — the maximum cutoff on the number of renewals, the effective minimum cutoff because a work’s copyright related economic value might be below the cost of registration, and the granularity being annual, rather than to the second — but other than that, the copyright holders decide if their work is still worth getting protected. If not, they fail to act, and the work enters the public domain.
Besides, an ideal copyright system wouldn’t be based on the amount of copyright related economic value of the work, it would be based on the minimum amount which was necessary to get the author to create and publish it. Any more than that is superfluous, whether the work has continuing vitality or not. But lacking mind readers to staff the Copyright Office, I think the many short renewals plan is sound.
Re: Re: Re:
Also, real property has the concept of ownership by the right of adverse possession applied to it. If someone owns property and doesn’t use it or maintain it, another can come along show that they have been using it and maintaining it for a given period and then use that to actually acquire it for themselves.
Re: Re:
cost to produce has little bearing on the quality and popularity of a production. what you propose would mean a low budget but highly popular movie would be protected less that a high cost low quality movie.
you cant switch from a consumer centric to a production centric, the things you want the copyright of are the GOOD and POPULAR things, the things you somehow value (but would rather steal). Your not all that worried that things are copyrighted if they are things you don’t want and have no interest in, you want the copyright to things you value the “hurt lockers” or whatever it is you want..
Its because they ARE popular, that they are also popular and desired by you, that’s why you are holding you breath for the copyright to expire, SO YOU CAN USE IT AND ENJOY IT AT YOUR WILL,,,, FOR FREE…
Why, because you really, really want to.
would you care if you never got to use a movie that you hate, and would not watch if you were tied to the chair?
Of course not, the things you are interested in are the things you value, you want to share in that value, you want the right to copy it and distribute it to friends to also enjoy, and you want to enjoy it yourself.
so its a false argument to state these things have no value, they have enough value to you that you desire them, to own and use them, that’s the value everyone (who likes them) attributes.
Just some accept the people who created that thing that you value should receive a fair (and even excessive) reward for creating it.
I do not think it is right to take that value away, and expect the continued created of these products you value so highly.
In other words you seek to destroy the things you value so highly because you cant get what you value for free !
If you win, and do destroy them, these things you value wont exist (copyrighted or not), then NO ONE gets value from these products.
Re: Re: Re:
and to prove all of what you have said is correct…..
Oh, you want me to believe you on faith.
From an industry that makes its living telling stories?
From an industry that cannot count.
Empire Strikes Back. $486 Million dollars it has grossed, cost $32 Million dollars to make, yet, is still in the red and has not made a profit.
How much tax was paid out of that $486 million dollars?
Re: Re: Re:
cost to produce has little bearing on the quality and popularity of a production.
I agree. Indeed, one of the reasons that I don’t fear drastic reductions in the length and breadth of copyright is that the proportion of works which are of good quality will remain constant, even if the budget for works shrinks quite a lot. This is Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.
SO YOU CAN USE IT AND ENJOY IT AT YOUR WILL,,,, FOR FREE…
Sure! I love free stuff. Who doesn’t love free stuff?
I have a limited budget, like basically everyone, and so free stuff is quite handy as I can get as much of it as I please and not take any hits to my pocketbook in the process.
Just some accept the people who created that thing that you value should receive a fair (and even excessive) reward for creating it.
No, I disagree.
There’s a good story about this: There was a very poor man who lived next to a bakery. The poor man could only afford very simple, bland food, and sometimes only food that tasted bad and was affordable to him only because no one else wanted it. But the smells coming from the bakery overcame the blandness, or offensiveness, of his food, and gave him great joy.
The baker was greedy, and when he heard about this, he sued the poor man, claiming that because the poor man valued the smells from the bakery, that the baker should receive a fair (and even excessive) reward for creating it.
The judge hearing the lawsuit agreed with the baker. But being a very just and wise judge, he told the poor man to jingle the only coins that he had in front of the baker. The just payment to the baker for creating the smells that the poor man enjoyed was getting to listen to the sounds of the coins that the baker coveted. But not to get the actual coins themselves, as the poor man had never gotten any actual bread from the baker.
Or if you would like a more prosaic example, suppose that we are neighbors, and that I drastically improve my property to such a great extent that it increases the value of your land, simply because we are neighbors. (This happens all the time, BTW) When you sell your land for a higher price than you could have gotten, had we not been neighbors, and had I not improved my land, do I deserve a share equal to my efforts?
In our society, the answer is no, I do not.
Further, I’d point out that works are most valuable when they are in the public domain, and that it may well be a worthwhile trade to have fewer works created and published if there is also greater freedom for the public in the works which are created and published. Certainly in the current legal climate, I’d happily take that deal.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don’t. Seriously. I don’t hate it, but I am blessed in my life to have enough of an income to afford to buy everything I want without it hurting — so “free” has little inherent appeal to me. I do recognize that I’m very fortunate, and I do remember the days when I was in abject poverty and “free” meant the world to me.
darryl has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.
Here’s how you fix it start with the original text no sense adding more and more gibberish,It’s worthless and pointless to have to scroll thru 50,000 other clauses of whys and why nots, If it broken don’t fix it with band-aides or super glue that’s only used in home repairs not the Constitution which is a etched in stone Document that is the foundation of our Nation for every generation after.
Leave This,
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.
And remove everything written in afterwards.
Re: Re:
Shall we toss back in the parts about slavery too? Why not just roll everything back, clearly we have not advanced, right?
copyright
Why is there no device made with a copyright button? I know you can ctrl/shift/c etc but if there was any minimum attempt at integrity within the tech community there would have been pressure on apple/microsoft/sui generis to build a c into keyboards and keypads. The very absence of a copyright button on every device ever made ( please correct me if I am wrong here,) really says it all doesn’t it?
Azon 404 TakeOver
you have no desire to be part of society. you just want to steal our culture without paying for it.
Using the Hurt Locker as an example of a good movie just shows how much you have no idea what you are talking about.
Placing this here will have no effect on anything, you need to get it out there where it can make a difference, the front page of the NY times, have someone who can bring it up during the congress debates, make it so popular that everyone knows it, and many other ways to make sure everyone knows about it and those in a position to promote change use it to do so.
This is a big problem today, there’s no shortage of good ideas, but they are often locked into a tiny corner of the world, not in a place where they can be oput to best use (which exposes it to those who want to destroy it, but they are winning right now anyways or else non of this would have needed to be written)
Should free expression accommodate copyright?
“Pretty much everyone is both a content creator and a content consumer.”
People create content and utilize content, but this statement is largely irrelevant. Copyright law is directed to original works of authorship, and while the legal standard for what constitutes a work of authorship is not as rigorous as some may prefer, the simple matter is that most of the day to day content that people prepare are hardly within the scope of the term “original work of authorship”.
“Technology is just a tool.”
No, technology represents a body of information that enables/facilitates people to create products capable of performing useful functions. I have never seen technology ever perform any function other than convey useful information to persons who may be able to incorporate it into useful devices, methods, compositions of matter, etc.
“Every legislative choice has costs and benefits.”
I believe costs should be replaced with detriments since costs imply financial expenses and legislation is typically concerned with the implementation of policy decisions having pros and cons.
“Decisions need to be made based on empirical data.”
Perhaps this may be true for some, but it is in no way a rule of general applicability. Attempting to do this for copyright law seems to me to be an exercise in futility because for every one of your impeccable studies “against” equally impeccable studies “far” can be identified and presented. It has proven well nigh impossible to apply an objective standard as you believe can be done, which is why for over the history of copyright law all such attempts have proven to be exercises in futility.
“Finally, and most importantly, the focus needs to remain on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.”
While it is pleasing to note that the initial portion of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 is generally reflected in the above, in the vast majority of instances the term used is “promote the progress”, a completely meaningless and uninformative term. While one can easily find cases they believe serve as significant substantive limitations upon Congress in patent and copyright law, it is worthwhile to note that the judiciary defers to a great degree as to Congress’ interpretation of the power it has been conferred under Article 1, is generally hostile to placing substantive limitations on precatory clauses, and even in the instance of a true limitation, i.e., “limited times”, has shown great deference to legislative judgments about what is deemed “limited times”. The Copyright Act of 1976 adopted a copyright term that was a quantum leap over that of the Copyright Act of 1909, and yet it has time and time again withstood challenges with respect to the “limited times” provision. The bottom line is that Congress possesses a wide range of power that seems to trouble so many here because much of what it does not fit that which they insist should be the case.
Re: Re:
People create content and utilize content, but this statement is largely irrelevant. Copyright law is directed to original works of authorship, and while the legal standard for what constitutes a work of authorship is not as rigorous as some may prefer, the simple matter is that most of the day to day content that people prepare are hardly within the scope of the term “original work of authorship”.
That is not correct – at all.
From Nolo’s Law Dictionary:
There is nothing in that definition that infers anything about the “significance” or “relevance” of a work.
The only requirements are:
– It’s fixed in a tangible medium
– That it’s original and not a copy
– That it’s not a “idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery”
That covers daily emails, doodles on a napkin, post-it notes on the fridge and the snowman your kids made on the front lawn. All covered by copyright the moment they created.
Re: Re: Re:
Not necessarily as their is an additional requirement, among others, that the work exhibit some modicum of creativity. An objective standard for what constitutes creativity has never, to my knowledge, been recited in case law, but it remains a legal requirement nevertheless.
Moreover, no matter what the standard, a necessary condition of being able to prevent/limit the use of a work preserved under copyright is that of formal registration, and an optional one that enhances remedies pre-registration is the use of formal notices of copyright on each work.
As I noted the standard is not a high bar, but in practical terms the vast majority of what some may wish to consider an original work of authorship (whether or not it really is) are of such a nature that enforcement is merely a theoretical possibility and nothing more.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That’s simply how courts determine if something is “original.” It’s not a direct standard in and of itself. Something is “original,” even if it is based (like all art) on prior works, if there has been a sufficient amount of creativity involved in producing the new work.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Not necessarily as their is an additional requirement, among others, that the work exhibit some modicum of creativity. An objective standard for what constitutes creativity has never, to my knowledge, been recited in case law, but it remains a legal requirement nevertheless.
That standard is the the work has to have a “minimum of creativity”. Everything I listed would qualify. What wouldn’t qualify would be a phone book or a list of ingredients for a recipe (ie: a database of facts, per the Feist ruling).
Moreover, no matter what the standard, a necessary condition of being able to prevent/limit the use of a work preserved under copyright is that of formal registration, and an optional one that enhances remedies pre-registration is the use of formal notices of copyright on each work.
Formal registration and/or copyright notices have not been required since the Copyright Act of 1976.
As I noted the standard is not a high bar, but in practical terms the vast majority of what some may wish to consider an original work of authorship (whether or not it really is) are of such a nature that enforcement is merely a theoretical possibility and nothing more.
It’s not just a theoretical possibility – it’s hard coded in copyright statutes and case law. Pretty much everything is copyrighted at the moment it’s fixed to a tangible medium and that most certainly includes your daily emails and whatnot. Everyone IS a creator these days, there is no distinction between a “professional creator” and someone who creates stuff within the scope of their daily lives in the eyes of copyright law.
In order to initiate an enforcement proceeding on must first register their “work” with the Copyright Office. No registration? No lawsuit.
Notice removed as requirement in 1995, but failure to use it forecloses certain remedies. One is that without such a notice you cannot cut off an innocent infringer d3fense.
Re: Re:
In order to initiate an enforcement proceeding on must first register their “work” with the Copyright Office. No registration? No lawsuit.
Also not true. If you register a copyright prior to infringement you are entitled to statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Without registration you are only entitled to actual damages, but you can still file a lawsuit for infringement.
Notice removed as requirement in 1995, but failure to use it forecloses certain remedies. One is that without such a notice you cannot cut off an innocent infringer d3fense.
Actually, the requirement was removed with the Copyright Act of 1976 and the 1988 Berne Convention Implementation Act. It’s optional for any work created on and after March 1, 1989.
As for the innocent infringement defense, that doesn’t negate a finding of infringement at all, although it may be effective for reducing the punishment for infringement, it’s really an uphill battle for the defendant to prove regardless of whether is there is a copyright notice or not.
Re: Re: Re:
I spoke in somewhat general terms merely because there is leeway associated with formal registration. The bottom line, however, is that a registration must be secured right smartly if a lawsuit is to proceed.
Re copyright notice, its use continued to be mandatory until the copyright law was changed about 1988, making use of a notice optional for works published on or after 3/1/89.
From a Copyright Office circular:
“For works first published on or after March 1, 1989, use
of the copyright notice is optional. Before March 1, 1989,
the use of the notice was mandatory on all published works.
Omitting the notice on any work first published before that
date could have resulted in the loss of copyright protection
if corrective steps were not taken within a certain amount of time.”
More importantly, however, is what I believe to be a very practical observation. No matter how many original works of authorship may exist and be associated with a copyright, enforcement of such a right is a time consuming and expensive proposition for the VAST majority of such works. Thus, it is a bit of hyperbole for people to suggest that vast amounts of material subject to copyright automatically means that vast amounts of “works” are essentially foreclosed from being created in the first instance.