How do you beat the content producers at their own game? By creating a new model. Kanopy is a streaming service that charges Australian libraries for content — instead of users — making for a sustainable model for distributing content locked by copyright laws. By charging government-backed entities for distribution rights, the content makers obtain the money they are after while the public has limited access to the movies they want to see making for a win-win situation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:33AM (5 children)
The main problem in post-scarcity capitalism is how to create an artificial scarcity that justifies profits being skimmed where no actual service is being provided. I am looking at you, Elsevier, and you, Disney, and you, well, all of you corporate copyright holders. If Corporations can hold copyright, we should require them to die every 70-90 years, so their holdings can be released to public domain. If this requires that all shareholders be slain as well, I am alright with that. Many more have suffered far more for much less.
My policy has always been: Dead men (or women) do not hold copyright. Copyright should only belong to the original author, and be non-transferable. As it is, I, as any sane human, ignores the regime, and pirate and share mercilessly, because sharing is caring and the progress of the arts and sciences is more important than profits and property rights. Sosume, great sushi restaurant in Manhattan!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:30AM (1 child)
This is the best idea I've ever read.
In the US corporations abused their way into being declared people.
People die.
Bring it on!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:49PM
> In the US corporations abused their way into being declared people. People die.
This. 1000 times this. Corporations:
1. Can't be jailed in any meaningful sense
2. Can dissolve and reform with almost the exact same structure in place, but be considered a completely different legal entity
3. Have far more money ("speech") than any one individual
4. Have no family ties or personal connections
5. Can pay basically any fine, because someone else (customers) always pays the bill
Whatever that is, it doesn't sound like a person.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @12:50PM (2 children)
Storing masters on celluloid and magnetic tape isn't cheap, neither is transferring, remastering and transcoding them or doing rights clearance. It may be shocking to Aristarchus but many people take lower rates in favor of residuals payable when material is re-released. These are legal contracts between corporations (rights holders) and contractors. So all you actually support is corporations screwing the little guy - no surprise given your generally ill-informed, myopic and self-centered world view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:56PM
My guess is that these contracts would be written in a different way if residuals no longer panned out.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:15PM
Your attempts to flatter me will end in tears!