Two Congressmen Introduce Law To Grant Copyright To Golf Course Design
from the fore! dept
Of all the ways in which Congress chooses to spend its time and focus its priorities, legislation introducing a solution in search of a problem is surely one of the most frustrating. With that in mind, two United States Congress critters have introduced House Resolution 7228, which aims chiefly to confer concrete copyright protection to golf courses. Yes, to golf courses. And if you were concerned that this bill wouldn’t have been circuitously named to make it all a jaunty golf pun, well, your fears are unfounded.
U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) are cosponsors of H.R. 7228. Dubbed the “Bolstering Intellectual Rights against Digital Infringement Enhancement Act” or the “BIRDIE Act,” the bill was introduced on Feb. 5.
At issue with H.R. 722 is the U.S. Code’s wording of copyright protection for architectural works. The Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990 protects the design of buildings “as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans, or drawings.”
When you get into some of the commentary surrounding how copyright and golf course design interact, it gets all the more absurd. The Congressmen’s comments on their legislation mostly amounts to insisting that designers need and deserve the same copyright protection as any other artist or creator. If you’re waiting for them to explain why that is, welcome to the club.
What seems to be the pretty clear, but unspoken, issue is that video games and golf simulators have taken to creating virtual copies of golf courses. And, typical “wait, why don’t I get paid for that” greed has seeped in. But some things aren’t copyrightable for good reasons. Remember, copyright is designed to create an incentive for the initial creation. And that’s it. Does anyone really believe golf course designers are suddenly no longer willing to design a golf course, because it might show up in a video game years later?
And, frankly, the bill seems to confuse functional and creative designs. And that has a pretty big impact on whether a design is afforded copyright law as it currently stands.
Under the Useful Article doctrine in US copyright law, if an object has a practical or useful function, copyright protection applies only to the original, creative elements “that can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of an object”, but does not extend to the underlying design of the functional object.
Look, as an avid golfer and fan of the sport, course design is an incredibly important aspect of the game. Mostly that is a matter of the function of playing the course that was designed and the strategies and shot-selection choices it forces you to make. Sure, part of what goes into course design is aesthetic, too. But that mostly revolves around showing off the natural surroundings in which the course is situated. The “tangible medium” in this case would be predominantly the sculpting of the natural world. That is worthy of copyright protection?
And again, this seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Are course designers out there in the poor house? Sure, courses and holes get replicated by other courses, or in video games, all the time. That’s only a problem if we agree that courses and their designs should be copyrighted. If not, where exactly is the harm?
And if this is all on the up and up, why are only certain types of courses getting copyright protection while others are not?
H.R. 7228 would alter the copyright statute to explicitly include “the design of a course on which golf is played”—except for miniature golf—”as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including an architectural plan or drawing.” The bill further protects specific characteristics of golf courses including irrigation systems; landscaping; paths; golf greens; tees; practice facilities; bunkers; lakes; and topographic features.
So every man-made lake gets copyright protection? Every teraformed area’s topographic features? Landscaping? The placement of irrigation systems?
Legislation should be designed to solve a problem or to right a wrong. I can’t for the life of me figure out how this bill does either.
Filed Under: birdie act, brian fitzpatrick, copyright, golf, golf courses, jimmy panetta, simulators, video games
Comments on “Two Congressmen Introduce Law To Grant Copyright To Golf Course Design”
Copyrighted golf course designs will incentivize starving golf course designers to design more golf courses. Think of the starving golf course designers!
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Yeah .. my first thought was, do we really need more golf courses?
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Well, if you want fewer golf courses copyright is a great way to accomplish that.
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prepares to download a whole fucking golf course with torrents
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If you want the golf-course to have the right grass make sure you get the right seeds…
Re: They're upset
that AI golf course designers are going to take their job.
Speaking of architectural works, can we all agree that it would be lovely if one the Caspian littoral states replicated the [“new”] Reich Chancellery 1:1 in their capital?
I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to when the Sawgrass course enters the public domain, and I can go nuts with remixing the landscaping.
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You mean, like replacing the Hydrangea with Rhododendrons?
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I’m going above and beyond. I’m replacing the water with Jell-O!
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Jello shots!
I’d argue that mini-golf course design is FAR more creative than regular course design, so why is it not included?
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I’m not defending any bit of this bill, though I would like to point something out.
Mini-golf is fundamentally not played the same way as regular golf.
You don’t lose the ball like you would on a driving range (and maybe a regular golf course), cause you only get 1 ball for the entire course. And you need to return it at the end.
There are a lot of mini-golf courses that are indoors. And even the ones that aren’t tend to take up the space approximately the size of the paved area surrounding a gas station. So they have an rather small amount of space to work with.
You don’t walk/stand on the green unless it’s your turn. So you also need walking paths, further reducing space for the individual holes.
As a result, no lakes. ‘Sand’ pits are shallow and usually small (and normally have no sand). Hills are relatively close and are height limited, but have more precise grading. (ball is to stay closer to grounds to lesson risk of being lost). Challenges often come in the form of the direction changes (or simply blocking the most direct path) and narrow passages to try and get the ball through.
All in all, most innovation for mini-golf is in aesthetics. Like making it ocean themed or heavy use of blacklight paint (latter one tends to be used for courses in malls).
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Your name should be “Lawyer Pretzel”.
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“You don’t lose the ball like you would on a driving range…”
Well, obviously, you’ve never seen me at Putt-Putt.
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“Ball. is. in…PARKING LOT.”
-Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge
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Unfortunately I am also rather poor in putt-putt. Maybe I should have phrased that better.
Do golf coursea use a lot of concrete?
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They’ve got “no asphalt” insurance…
“The bill further protects specific characteristics of golf courses including irrigation systems; landscaping; paths; golf greens; tees; practice facilities; bunkers; lakes; and topographic features.”
… Doesn’t this start to copyright… landscaping?
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I mean, the word “landscaping” is right there in that list of things the bill would protect. So expect to see every landscaper add a small hole with a flag somewhere on their design so they can claim the whole thing is copyrightable as part of a golf course.
Golf is worthless... unless it has copyright protection!
Copyright maximalism is a cult, and this bill proves it. It’s like nothing has value to these people unless there is copyright protection. The inventor of the polio vaccine once said:
Patent, no. But to these people, it’s only a matter of time until someone finds a way to copyright it! And when that happens, they’ll go after all those dastardly sun pirates who dare manufacture light bulbs without getting permission from the sun’s creator, who is… (checks notes) God!?!?
You might say that’s ludicrous, but then I never thought people would be demanding to grant copyright protection to golf courses. And yet, here we are!!
Good to know that this congress’s priorities are clear and have people’s interests in mind.
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I mean, bills like this do have people’s interests in mind, one specific selection of people to be exact or a percentage of them if you will…
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A very small percentage, roughly 1%.
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About 10% more than there are actual trannies
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dafuq?
You wouldn’t steal a car.
You wouldn’t steal my golf ball and replace it with your own to score an easy birdie
Looks like they’ve decided Darius Jedburg (CIA agent, Edge of Darkness, BBC) is right, and golf is sacred, much more sacred than anything else:
When I think of St Andrews, Carnoustie and Leith, I begin to realise that it’s more than just a coincidence that Divine Providence has brought forth oil from out of the depths of the North Sea; that oil will help save the golf courses of Scotland.
I gotta wonder why mini-golf is specifically excluded considering that mini-golf layouts are probably more creative than regular golf courses..
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I suspect that these congressists were traumatized trying to make the windmill hole.
It will be fun when a golf course gets sued over being too similar to an imaginary course in a game or fiction.
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Good catch. If ‘copying’ a real course into a game counts as infringement then it would follow that doing the reverse would also be infringement, so this trainwreck of a bill would open up both sides of that equation to legal risk.
At this rate, photography of anything that hasn’t gone untouched for at least a century might be prohibited
Can’t keep the government open, but they can expand copyright where none is needed.
Time to pass the STAN Act: Stop These Acronyms Now
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The official term is “Backronym.”
I have not played a video golf game in some time, are there any that claim to be like a real course?
If so, I imagine the game developer or publisher had to obtain licensing .. or not – idk.
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PGA Tour Golf was released in 1990. There were at least 11 more of those, alone.
My next door neighbor would be one of the largest beneficiaries of this
as he’s probably the best known pure golf course designer (i.e not a former PGA player) in the business. He even wrote a book on how to play golf courses based on what the designer had in mind.
I’ll have to ask him what he thinks about this. Neither of the bill’s sponsor represent us, and knowing how large his team is I doubt there was a lot of lobbying from him.
My guess would be this is being pushed by some of the famous golf course owners, and the idea is that the designers would be doing “work for hire” and assigning copyright to the property owner when completed.
Good Luck, we own them all and will sue you into a small pile of ashes if you even try to plant grass.
-Monstano
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Bayer: Oh yeah, we did buy Monsanto, but we do like this idea a lot!
Golf courses should be designed so that they aren’t so damaging to the ecosystems around them. If these clowns want to draft some REAL legislation, how about a requirement that all such constructions be designed to be environmentally neutral? The savings in water alone would be tremendous, particularly in locations like Arizona. It would be CONSERVATIVE of it, in point of fact.
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What??
No more green golf courses in the middle of a desert?
What kind of no good commie crap is this?
/s