In Serving Big Company Interests, Copyright Is in Crisis:
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what's at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.
Copyright rules are made with the needs of the entertainment industry in mind, designed to provide the legal framework for creators, investors, distributors, production houses, and other parts of the industry to navigate their disputes and assert their interests.
A good copyright policy would be one that encouraged diverse forms of expression from diverse creators who were fairly compensated for their role in a profitable industry. But copyright has signally failed to accomplish this end, largely because of the role it plays in the monopolization of the entertainment industry (and, in the digital era, every industry where copyrighted software plays a role). Copyright's primary approach is to give creators monopolies over their works, in the hopes that they can use these as leverage in overmatched battles with corporate interests. But monopolies have a tendency to accumulate, piling up in the vaults of big companies, who use these government-backed exclusive rights to dominate the industry so that anyone hoping to enter it must first surrender their little monopolies to the hoards of the big gatekeepers.
Creators get a raw deal in a concentrated marketplace, selling their work into a buyer's market. Giving them more monopolies – longer copyright terms, copyright over the "feel" of music, copyright over samples – just gives the industry more monopolies to confiscate in one-sided negotiations and add to their arsenals. Expecting more copyright to help artists beat a concentrated industry is like expecting more lunch money to help your kid defeat the bullies who beat him up on the playground every day. No matter how much lunch money you give that kid, all you'll ever do is make the bullies richer.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 27 2020, @04:29PM (2 children)
Authors who think they need copyright to create something are an archetypal example of vocal minority.
You seem to misunderstand copyright. Copyright is to keep Random House, who has tons of cash for marketing, from making tons more cash selling books that I wrote without paying me; I don't have their marketing capital. But I should NOT have a monopoly on my books for the rest of my life, the twenty years they were protected in the 20th century and earlier is plenty long. For computer programs that's way too long, the hardware becomes obsolete before the software reaches the public domain.
Copyright needs reform, but a lot of you want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday January 27 2020, @05:19PM
Why would you want to be paid for every reprint of your work? You do not expend any effort for copies that you don't make yourself. This whole idea of getting paid per work copied is nonsense that leads to perverse incentives. Only actual effort put into making the creative work is really valuable but it's not directly related to number of works copied. Most definitely it doesn't scale linearly with number of copies.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 31 2020, @07:34PM
> Copyright is to keep Random House ... from making tons more cash selling books that I wrote without paying me
Firstly, the whole system of charging per copy has to eventually give way to reality. The only reason it works now is through inertia, a certain degree of convenience that publishers are at last providing through tablets, and most of all, the mercy and benevolence of the public who really do feel that artists deserve compensation for creating entertaining and/or thought provoking works, and that buying a copy is a good way to do that. Also, there persists belief that publishers do an adequate job of screening out bad art.
As to big publishers screwing over individual authors, yes, that is a problem. But copyright is very much itself a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" solution that just blanket forbids all copying to everyone that artists don't approve, and there is little mechanism for artists to engage in discriminating in favor of the kinds of copying they might actually want to allow. It's default "no", and again, in large part it's an emo thing. Allow any copying at all, weaken the monopoly just a little, and artists might lose money and their children will go hungry!!! That even obvious fair use cases can still be challenged in court is absurd.
This problem can be resolved by growing other, far more permissive systems for collecting, figuring, and delivering compensation to artists and contributors such as editors. No more "mother may I?" for every little thing. Then we would be a whole lot freer to use our culture. Public libraries could at last go fully digital. Maybe copyright should be retained, perhaps in a weaker form, until these other systems are established. But on the other hand, where's the incentive to get busy on replacements, if there's no push to end copyright? I'd like to see copyright sunsetted. For instance, have all existing and new copyrights granted in the future terminate on Feb 1, 2048, 28 years from today. Artists obtaining copyrights in 2030 will have only 18 years of copyright protection. By 2047, with just 1 year left, artists likely wouldn't bother.
Those who think copyright, if it worked, is best at maximizing artists' profits, should consider that public libraries loan out books to far more people than they have copies. Not one cent of used book store sales goes to authors, or publishers. And of course, friends can give books, records, and flash drives to one another. Of course there is also the Economics 101 argument about demand curves. There's a great deal of art I would have enjoyed had it not been out of my reach for a variety of reasons. We are Cord Nevers. Our town did not have a movie theater, just a Blockbusters. Didn't go there much anyway. My parents felt that movies and the TV were basically a waste of time. I saw few movies, and never any shows that appeared only on cable TV, and I often didn't know to what my friends were alluding.