It's election season in the UK, and the Green Party's policy document has been coming under scrutiny recently. In it is a desire to reduce copyright term to 14 years (not life + 14 years, but 14 years from publication).
Unsurprisingly, this has received a bit of a backlash from various parties.
There's no chance the Green Party will form the next government, so this is all academic, but is this a sensible idea? Are people overreacting?
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UK Green Party Proposes 14-year Copyright Term - Artists are not Amused
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @02:26PM
Sensible is 5 years extendable by 4 more years, and then 3 more years, and then 2 more years, and then one last year. Each time you do it add more zeros at the right side of the amount of money required.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday April 24 2015, @04:41PM
Exactly. I proposed this exact scheme (with slightly different years and dollar amounts) years ago on that other site.
My idea was basically 5 years copyright for free, and then you had to renew it every 5 years. Every time you renew, it costs 10x as much money; maybe $10k for 10 years, $100k for 15 years, $1M for 20 years, etc. If your copyrighted work is really that valuable, you should be able to afford these fees. If it isn't valuable and profitable enough to afford that, then it should just be in the public domain. 5 years for free is good enough so that small/poor artists and creators aren't burdened in any way and have a chance at making big money, and for highly profitable works, they can keep it protected for a long time, and the money will help fund the government.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @05:50PM
All this hullabaloo about the length of the copyright term is pointless, imho. Speaking specifically about the copyright (not patents, not trademarks), the Pirate Party has it right in principle: it simply should not apply to non-commercial file sharing. And if all non-commercial sharing is free, then the present term is not really too long. In fact, if we want to continue enforcing copyleft licenses such as GPL and pure attribution licenses such as BSD or CC-BY, then we could probably leave the copyright term just where it is.
Could, but I don't mean we should. Even better would be to replace the copyright with an attribution right, but this probably won't happen anywhere except for a few jurisdictions. It is more realistic to wait while copyright morphs into something less ugly, or may be even useful to the public.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @06:09PM
it simply should not apply to non-commercial file sharing.
The problem here is that at least 30% of people here (numbers pulled straight out of my ass) believe that sharing music, movies, freely over the net constitutes non-commercial file sharing.
So if non-commercial sharing is allowed under your copyright rules, the minute an artists publishes a recording, all it takes is a whim on the part of one person to share the file, and the artist has lost his market.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @06:21PM
Well of course, and it's not a matter of belief even, but a straightforward interpretation of "non-commercial" and "file-sharing". I think you are incorrect about the recording market being lost. Popular musicians are the same people who routinely get free blowjobs from their fans. They will lose nothing. They generate so much good will, they won't have any trouble convicing their fans to pay them for a chance to see them, hear them, get a recording from them, or even wear some promotional crap on their behalf. All this crap about the "lost profits" is pure myth, and it comes out of the recording industry's coke-addled brains.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Friday April 24 2015, @11:01PM
Plus, musicians could also make money from shows, performances, endorsements, and other appearances. But of course their management agencies (RIAA et. al.) take all of these proceeds away.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:26AM
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:36AM
Indeed - I completely agree.
I just realized that I must have skipped over your second-to-last sentence before I hit the reply button because you already stated everything I did in my post. My apologies...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 25 2015, @09:52PM
Actually, the money's in touring, not record sales. The labels get most of the money for records.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hash14 on Friday April 24 2015, @10:59PM
That's because the cost of reproducing the work is 0.
In the digital age, music is just a form of information, and information is an infinite commodity. It's just an idea or an expression which has no physical form, so it's infinitely replicable. The whole notion of copyright is to take something infinitely replicable and create an artificial scarcity. For anyone who understands how real things work, this economic model is utterly moronic.
A viable system should instead compensate artists before they release their work. Fans could instead pay artists to produce their work (ie. prior to when it is made or released) to incentivise and sustain the artists. Once the artist releases the work (ie. when the cat is out of the bag, proverbially speaking), there is no sensible physical obligation to compensate (the work is really nothing more than a number). Of course, there's no reason why people can't _choose_ to do so, but there is no physical obligation.
And in fact, this is exactly how research works. Governments, organizations, foundations, etc. support academics to do their work knowing that there is a value in the final product. But no one would pay for you to do the exact same research to reach the exact same conclusion. Another great example is kickstarter, where people support a product _while_ it's being made, rather than after once it has already lots all of its value.
So why shouldn't artists follow the same model? Well, this is the MAFIAA we're talking about. It turns out that their obsolete model does work when you can bribe major governments to legalize racketeering through laws like the DMCA and "trade partnerships" like TPP, TTIP/TAFTA, and others. But anyone with a brain can see how stupid it is to create laws which criminalize numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @11:21PM
Because the arts are something whose value is entirely subjective, and especially for music, bands change their style all the time, becoming better or usually turning to shit after 2 or 3 albums; who wants to fund a band they've never heard anything from, and which band would want to be forced to only perform the same kind of music over their entire careers, with no room for experimentation or maturation? And even if you do pre-fund, its likely you'll feel ripped off because their music wasn't to your tastes. With scientific research, its beneficial to everyone no matter what the result, and it almost always provides clues for what further research should tackle.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:25AM
With scientific research, its beneficial to everyone no matter what the result, and it almost always provides clues for what further research should tackle.
I'm not sure I agree with this - lots of research ends in dead ends and gets nowhere. There are of course lots of interesting side results with other works build upon, but the same is true in the arts industries.
As for the rest of your comment, I feel that they can work exactly the same way:
Earning recognition:
Research: new scientists train under more experienced ones
Art: artists of all forms collaborate all the time
Receiving grants:
Research: authors build credibility based on their previous works; both the grants and the work are small to start, but by building reputation, researchers get larger grants and more leeway to work on more significant experiments and publications
Art: a film-marker might produce a short prior to releasing a full-feature film, and a photographer could produce some simple shots prior to being funded for a more expensive excursion. Musicians produce short demos prior to producing LPs, EPs, albums, and so on - I think there are analogues in any artistic field you could think of
Prefunding might make you feel ripped off:
Research: grant awardees must provide updates to maintain their grants, as well as financial reports to show that they're using the money appropriately
Art: why not do the same? no great work is produced in an instant.
Experimentation:
Research: scientists don't usually get a blank check to do whatever they want either. However, they still make great discoveries by accident and again, many interesting results come out of side projects
Art: Pretty much the same in this case. Substitute doing research with making music or writing short stories. Ideas come naturally from doing the work in both fields.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @11:32PM
The whole notion of copyright is to take something infinitely replicable and create an artificial scarcity. For anyone who understands how real things work, this economic model is utterly moronic.
NO.
That is emphatically NOT the notion. YOU clearly do not understand the economic model.
The model isn't some conspiracy. Its really very simple. Its stated right up front in the constitution.
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.
There is nothing about scarcity there.
Authors and inventors have no incentive to make their work scarce.
Instead, they are given the right to reproduce their works, and make money from their work.
The model is not one of instant seizure of any work of an author or inventor. It is one of fair compensation for their efforts, by making a little money from EACH sale.
YOUR model is one of instant seizure, simply because you can.
A viable system should instead compensate artists before they release their work.
I'm sorry, son, you are late to the party. The world is not going to totally redefine the economic model just to suite you. Get over yourself!
You're a thief. Face it. You just want to take, and you haven't the slightest intention of compensating the artists or the author either before or after they create something. They could spend 6 months writing a book, after a life time of education in the field, and you still think its yours for the taking.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:07AM
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.
Even the intent as stated in the constitution is fallacious. What exactly is an exclusive right? What does that mean? How can you attach value to something that has no value? Can I copyright 142857? Then anyone who does division by 7 will have to owe me a royalty. But English students still have to pay for books that are just as easy to copy as a 6-digit number.
YOU clearly do not understand the economic model.
The quote you provided from the constitution is for a legal model, not an economic one.
Instead, they are given the right to reproduce their works, and make money from their work.
Impractical. Maybe that was useful in the days of the printing press, but once again, there's no physical value in reproducibility in today's world. Nowadays, it all just stems from an artificial legal construct. Do you really think an artificial legal construct is a better means than a real physical one?
Authors and inventors have no incentive to make their work scarce.
But they do anyway. Geoblocking is an example - an absurd practice which is unenforceable in a world where information is allowed to flow freely.
The model is not one of instant seizure of any work of an author or inventor. It is one of fair compensation for their efforts, by making a little money from EACH sale.
This I understand - I'm just saying that it's unenforceable.
YOUR model is one of instant seizure, simply because you can.
No, it isn't.
I'm sorry, son, you are late to the party.
Sounds much like how the MAFIAA does things: "It has always been this way, so we'll never change."
I think my model is better - more practical, and more economically sustainable for producers. Your model doesn't even support artists while they're creating. If they spend their entire lives working on something which ends up being a huge flop, they've wasted their lives and are left with nothing. Mine even supports them while they're working regardless of whether the final product is well received or not.
The world is not going to totally redefine the economic model just to suite you. Get over yourself!
This isn't a rebuttal. The rest of your post is ad hominem and to be frank, absurdly immature. I know that I shouldn't respond to ad hominems, but I do hope you'll notice the little star next to my username - if I were as you describe, do you think I would donate to a site where I could (and many others do) get everything for free? No, I support it both because I like it and because it supports the public good. Just like many other organizations, though I cannot prove those to you. Regardless, I think the facts I present contradict a personality that you describe.
Finally, you didn't bother responding to my suggestions to how the system can be improved, so I suppose that you have no response to that.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 25 2015, @11:18PM
How can you attach value to something that has no value?
If you think art, music, and literature have no value I feel sorry for you.
What exactly is an exclusive right? What does that mean? How can you attach value to something that has no value? Can I copyright 142857? Then anyone who does division by 7 will have to owe me a royalty.
You have no concept of how copyright works, kid. If you saw my laughter you'd be embarrassed.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Sunday April 26 2015, @05:58AM
If you think art, music, and literature have no value I feel sorry for you.
Strawman fallacy - there is value in the art, music and literature (hence why I'm actually trying to think of a reasonable way to compensate their creators, rather than relying on the obsolete systems built around around "intellectual property"). But there is no value in their digital representations because they are of infinite supply.
You have no concept of how copyright works, kid. If you saw my laughter you'd be embarrassed.
Enlighten me then.
First, the Constitution states that "the authors and inventors have _exclusive right_" to their works - to me, this is an uninterpretably vague statement. What exactly is this fantasmal right that they have?
Second, the purpose of my analogy is to demonstrate: if copyright can be imposed on a digital file (or a patent on an algorithm/implementation, a trademark on a .png), then you have effectively just censored what is nothing more than a number. And you are not permitted to share these numbers or use them without permission or in a way that the "author" doesn't like. So why shouldn't I be able to do the same for other numerical operations on numbers? I'll just create a file with my number in it, say it's my "property" and take collections from people who use it without my permission.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that people arguing in favour of ownership of digital data (or more basically, just information) are severely out of touch with reality. Nothing makes physical sense in a system where ideas and information and numbers can be restricted from being shared, expressed and thought about.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 27 2015, @03:13PM
there is value in the art, music and literature (hence why I'm actually trying to think of a reasonable way to compensate their creators, rather than relying on the obsolete systems built around around "intellectual property"). But there is no value in their digital representations because they are of infinite supply.
I certainly agree with that, which is why I give electronic versions of my books away for free. I don't think there's any monetary value in digits. They were mentioning on KSHE this morning that Alice Cooper postulated that the rise in vinyl sales were because "people were tired of buying air." He may be right; I've never "bought" any digital work that didn't come in physical form and the only way I will is if I get stupid.
BTW, if you like rock and roll, KSHE plays six full albums in their entirety every Sunday night. Capturing the internet stream is trivial (it's built into Windows but disabled and hidden). Monday is "burn CDs day" for me. I have nothing but disdain for those who only sell air.
Interestingly, I put a version of Mars, Ho on Amazon as a $2 e'book as an experiment. More people have bought hardcover copies, most have bought paperbacks which kind of backs up Cooper's theory somewhat. Of course, far more people download free versions, just like most bibliophiles have read far more library books than they've bought.
Reading and listening to music has always been free. I'm disgusted by people who now want to monetize it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by melikamp on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:10AM
You can quote the US Constitution all you want, but please understand it has nothing to do with economics. I think GP understands this economic model better than you do. In USA, as well as pretty much anywhere else in the world, authors and inventors have no incentive to keep their copyright in the first place, because the chances of them making any kind of cash from art are miniscule. So the beginning artists do in fact pre-sell their copyrights, and inventors go to work for hire, so that all this intellectual non-property ends up in the pockets of giant corporations, who are the only ones capable of advertizing and waiting for several years before they can get the return on this investment. And while they are waiting, these corporations troll the court to stop sharing and lobby your legislators for more censorship. This is how copyright actually works.
No, they are given exclusive rights to reproduce their works, which means they have a legal instrument allowing them to censor everyone else. The only application of the copyright law in court is to forbid sharing: to create the artificial scarcity the GP was talking about. The "incentive" is irrelevant because the actual scarcity is the only visible, provable outcome. That copyright somehow improves that rate at which new art is created is simply make-belief. All the studies done so far have shown that copyright monopolies may be affecting the kind of art being created, but not the quantity or the quality.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:37AM
to create the artificial scarcity the GP was talking about.
The opposite of scarce is not FREE.
Just because there is a price, does not mean something is scarce. It merely means someone has to spent time and effort to provide it for you, so you don't have to lift a finger. Those people don't work for free, and I suspect you don't either.
You want the 27000 copies of an artist's work? Pay for them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:01AM
Those people don't work for free, and I suspect you don't either.
They don't work for free, which is why they should ask for money for performing a service. The real problem begins when they try to tell others how to use their own equipment to copy and transfer data, and unleash government thugs to enforce their little monopoly.
You want the 27000 copies of an artist's work? Pay for them.
You realize that computers will make copies no matter what, right? Apparently you expect the author/artist to be paid whenever a copy is made, but that is simply insane.
And this mentality is doomed to fail, anyway. In the Age of Information, trying to place restrictions on copying is a hopeless endeavor, as evidenced by all the websites in existence that have pretty much everything available for free.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 25 2015, @11:14PM
In the digital age, music is just a form of information, and information is an infinite commodity. It's just an idea or an expression which has no physical form, so it's infinitely replicable.
Not just infinitely replicable, but infinitely replicable at zero cost. That's what has changed. Producing and stamping an LP was an expensive proposition. Printing a book still is.
The whole notion of copyright is to take something infinitely replicable and create an artificial scarcity.
No, it isn't. Copyrights are to encourage creative people to create. Without copyright, NOBODY is going to buy your manuscript because if they can get their hands on a copy it's theirs, and even creative people have to eat.
The young USA learned the hard way. At first, foreign works were in the public domain in the US, so American authors simply couldn't get published, since all the British works were free for the publishers.
A viable system should instead compensate artists before they release their work. Fans could instead pay artists to produce their work (ie. prior to when it is made or released) to incentivise and sustain the artists.
I don't buy records from a band I've never heard before, and I don't buy books from authors I've never read before. Do you? If so, IMO you're really weird and not very smart. How is a young musician or author supposed to get noticed under such a system?
So why shouldn't artists follow the same model? Well, this is the MAFIAA we're talking about.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about independent artists, musicians, songwriters, and authors. Notice you never see an indie artist suing for "piracy"?
The only viable model is being strangled by the MAFIAA's greed. Back when Napster was in full force, the RIAA cokeheads thought nobody would buy CDs any more since you could download an MP3, and besides that they saw a way to get money for absolutely nothing (typical cokehead) and started "selling" MP3s. Had they not been so greedy as to slicing up the golden goose, they should have touted the advantages of physical media and used digital as advertising.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Sunday April 26 2015, @06:54AM
Not just infinitely replicable, but infinitely replicable at zero cost. That's what has changed. Producing and stamping an LP was an expensive proposition. Printing a book still is.
Reproducing a book in a digital form is also zero cost. I suppose that's a finer point that I've been overlooking. There is a cost in recording the digital format (whether it's an audio, image, video, text, or other type of file). But once it has been digitized, the replicability is zero cost.
The whole notion of copyright is to take something infinitely replicable and create an artificial scarcity.
No, it isn't. Copyrights are to encourage creative people to create. Without copyright, NOBODY is going to buy your manuscript because if they can get their hands on a copy it's theirs, and even creative people have to eat.
Not true if you compensate them before the cost has been eliminated.
The young USA learned the hard way. At first, foreign works were in the public domain in the US, so American authors simply couldn't get published, since all the British works were free for the publishers.
I don't fully understand what this is supposed to demonstrate beyond the fact that unequal treatment makes it harder for one group to compete against another. If anything, this almost seems like a tariff favouring British authors over American ones. Besides, people get tired of old works after a while and want new ones which are more contemporary as well. So I don't think artists would have to compete too hard against their previous works if they were all in the public domain.
And I can also tell you that it works the other way too. Why did the US have such explosive growth in the industrial revolution? The water-powered mill wasn't developed or patented in the US, but they did manage to utilize it for some pretty massive growth. I think this is a strong argument of the progress that can be achieved when we remove artificial legal barriers. How might we extend it to copyright? Well, artists could remix music freely (currently, that's a very dangerous thing to do because proving fair use in a court is cripplingly expensive), or writers could freely create fan fiction (another area where there are perpetually hovering legal threats).
I don't buy records from a band I've never heard before, and I don't buy books from authors I've never read before. Do you? If so, IMO you're really weird and not very smart. How is a young musician or author supposed to get noticed under such a system?
Have you ever been to an event or a bar where there's a band playing in the back? Have you ever been to a music festival with both established and upcoming bands? Have you ever watched a movie short? Do you think artists just walk into the studio and lay out an album having never produced a single demo or LP in their careers? Have you ever read an excerpt from an author that piqued your interest and made you want to find more from them (and possibly support them in creating that)?
I'd say that things already work this way. Publishers invest in artists to produce their work - but they release the full work before they try to recoup their expenses, and then their product has had its value eliminated. Does that make sense to you?
So why shouldn't artists follow the same model? Well, this is the MAFIAA we're talking about.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about independent artists, musicians, songwriters, and authors. Notice you never see an indie artist suing for "piracy"?
The only viable model is being strangled by the MAFIAA's greed. Back when Napster was in full force, the RIAA cokeheads thought nobody would buy CDs any more since you could download an MP3, and besides that they saw a way to get money for absolutely nothing (typical cokehead) and started "selling" MP3s. Had they not been so greedy as to slicing up the golden goose, they should have touted the advantages of physical media and used digital as advertising.
I agree on all these points - the content industries are failing to innovate. They have ever since they found their first pot of gold. It's also worth noting that pretty much all movies and music have been total rehashes with different faces since the late 90s and early 2000's. But that's tangential.
On point, I don't think sustainable innovation in a regime of censorship is practical, especially in a digital age. Hence I think there needs to be a move to adopt a system that's more physically robust. I have no idea if it will work if it doesn't happen, but I can tell you why no one has respect for the system we're stuck with today.
And I feel that a non-censorship system works better. Putting everything in the public domain makes it easier to discover works so artists can more easily gain both inspiration and notoriety. Services like Napster probably promoted discovery of new music, experimentation and fusion of new styles, and newfound recognition and appreciation for the artists (incentivising them to create even more!). The opportunity to take advantage of this cultural explosion was there, but instead it was smothered not just by the existing powers but by public opinion that they were doing something immoral!
And I feel that a pre-funding system works better as well. I'm sure that there are lots of artists and authors who give up on their hopes because they're not going to get compensated until they complete their work. How are they going to sustain themselves /before/ they manage to hit the big time? What happens if their work is a great flop instead and they get nothing out of it? And let's suppose that they do release their work to success - what's going to incentivise them to create more, rather than resting of the laurels of their previous work knowing that they can cash in on that for the rest of their lives (albeit at diminishing returns with the progress of time)?
We can continue doing things the same way forever, but we've never had an open-minded public debate as to whether copyright really is a smart, sensible and effective model for promoting the arts and sustaining those who produce them. I don't see evidence that it has helped - I only see evidence that it harms the arts, the audience, and ultimately the artists. I think there has to be a better way.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 27 2015, @03:35PM
Reproducing a book in a digital form is also zero cost.
Indeed, which is why I give the electronic versions of my work away for free.
Not true if you compensate them before the cost has been eliminated.
Who's going to do the compensating? Without copyrights, Doubleday would pay for a book to be written, but once published all the other publishers get a free ride. Nobody's going to pay anybody.
I don't think sustainable innovation in a regime of censorship is practical, especially in a digital age.
I agree, it isn't sustainable for digital works or file sharing. I'm of the opinion that digits shouldn't be covered by copyright, and in fact earlier copyright laws said the work had to be "in tangible form." Bits aren't tangible!
Copyright is there to protect "content creators" as they're called today not from consumers, but from publishers. The rich idiots at the MAFIAA want to turn that completely around. I have no need to be protected from you, but I do need to be protected from Doubleday.
And I feel that a non-censorship system works better. Putting everything in the public domain makes it easier to discover works so artists can more easily gain both inspiration and notoriety.
So how are they supposed to pay the rent? Only folks like me who don't have to work could produce much of anything. And what you've written is why the founding Americans put "for limited times" in the constitution.
And let's suppose that they do release their work to success - what's going to incentivise them to create more, rather than resting of the laurels of their previous work knowing that they can cash in on that for the rest of their lives (albeit at diminishing returns with the progress of time)?
Greed. The wise know that there's never enough money no matter how rich you are, so they're content with what they have and simply enjoy life rather than chasing rainbows looking for the leprechaun's gold - but there are few of us like that.
But what you pointed out s why the constitution says "for limited times" and is one of many reasons to shorten copyright terms. But 14 years is too short, twenty extendable to 30 or at most 40 would be IMO ideal.
I only see evidence that it harms the arts, the audience, and ultimately the artists. I think there has to be a better way.
The better way is to shorten copyrights drastically (life plus ninety five years is obscene) and make non-commercial sharing legal.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Monday April 27 2015, @10:50PM
Who's going to do the compensating? Without copyrights, Doubleday would pay for a book to be written, but once published all the other publishers get a free ride. Nobody's going to pay anybody.
I would suggest that Doubleday not publish the book until their costs have been recouped and they're satisfied with their margins. Think of it like a Kickstarter model - the creators set a funding goal (or multiple tiered goals), and when the goal(s) is/are met they are expected to release a product they they promised for reaching that goal.
To use a concrete example, suppose a book author has a franchise - the author has published x books and to release the x+1 book, he's requesting a goal of y dollars. If you want to put a publisher in the middle, then the publisher requests z dollars, gives y to the author, and keeps z-y as revenue. Then net result is that that the audience pays z, the author gets y, and the publisher gets z-y.
All I'm suggesting is this: take all the money which (under a copyright model) is supposed to come in after the publication, and provide it before. And I've stated in other posts why people will continue paying for it, but to reiterate, they could provide samples, marketing, and so on. Also, publishers would be able to use their revenue to support new creators that they think have potential, resolving the issue of how new creators can get started and develop a name for themselves (somewhat analogous to how professional sports teams reinvest in youth leagues to develop talented individuals who have future potential to play in the professional leagues).
And let's suppose that they do release their work to success - what's going to incentivise them to create more, rather than resting of the laurels of their previous work knowing that they can cash in on that for the rest of their lives (albeit at diminishing returns with the progress of time)?
Greed. The wise know that there's never enough money no matter how rich you are, so they're content with what they have and simply enjoy life rather than chasing rainbows looking for the leprechaun's gold - but there are few of us like that.
I agree with that. But I don't think copyright does as much to promote an artist to work on his next work.
And I wouldn't completely buy an argument that authors need to compete against their previous public domain works. I don't see people rewatching their old favourite episodes of today's popular television shows, and I think the same would go for movies, books, music, and other such domains.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:08PM
So how is a writer to get that first book published?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Wednesday May 06 2015, @05:24AM
A few ideas...
I understand that the industry doesn't work this way already, but I don't see why this couldn't be a sustainable, viable model.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Monday April 27 2015, @11:05PM
Copyright is there to protect "content creators" as they're called today not from consumers, but from publishers. The rich idiots at the MAFIAA want to turn that completely around. I have no need to be protected from you, but I do need to be protected from Doubleday.
Now I understand your argument.
I just think that this is where a scheme like copyright fails. The whole, "don't violate our terms for this work, else you will be sued" type model is only effective if you have the money to sue. When you consider how expensive a lawsuit can be, there's really not much value to be earned by launching a lawsuit. In a copyright model, you will never be able to evade the fact that the system favours those who are wealthy enough to afford lawsuits, while it basically hangs out to dry those who aren't.
In fact, let's be more concrete - let's suppose an author starts abusing the terms of a contract that they have with one of their authors. They can do it as long as they know that it would be more expensive for the author to take legal action to stop them (even if you have, say, a coalition group that would protect authors from these types of practises).. It's just like how the patent trolling model works. And this is another reason why I don't think a model that can only be enforced in a courtroom is viable - because of how courts and lawsuits work[1] (and the expenses and risks involved), it just inevitably favours the big guys over the small ones.
[1] And even if you have a loser-pays model, there could still be a negative opportunity cost based on the probability of a favourable outcome..
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:09AM
No, it isn't. Copyrights are to encourage creative people to create.
I've seen no credible scientific evidence that it actually is effective at doing such a thing, let alone scientific consensus. People simply make assertions that Bad Things would happen without copyright without providing a shred of hard scientific evidence. I've seen people provide baseless speculation and comparisons of different societies far different from our own in too many other ways, but no real evidence. Copyright places restrictions upon people's liberties, and yet its proponents are not even required to justify its existence? That is insane.
But even with evidence, the fact that it impacts freedom of speech and private property rights in significant ways is enough to make me oppose it, even if it had provable benefits.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:05PM
Every minute you spend grubbing for money is a minute you don't have to practice your craft. Look at the early US; it didn't recognize foreign copyrights, so NO AMERICAN AUTHORS COULD GET PUBLISHED AT ALL since the publishers didn't have to pay an author of a British book.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday May 01 2015, @12:01AM
That wasn't objective scientific evidence.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 14 2015, @05:20PM
It would be impossible to find scientific evidence of what would have been a course of action over two centuries ago. You might as well ask for objective scientific evidence of Plato's existence.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Friday April 24 2015, @07:37PM
...it simply should not apply to non-commercial...
Everything is commercial because everything you do has value to you. You are always choosing one form of value over another. Basing a public policy on some contrived distinction of "commercial" vs "noncommericial" is always wrong in principle.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @08:07PM
Commerce has to do with money and/or commodities. Just because something has a value, doesn't mean it has a monetary value or is valuable as a commodity. The value of the freedom to share bits of information with other willing participants is a great example of such a non-commercial value. You can put a price on it if you want, but it's NOT what makes it valuable (for most people; you may well be an exception).
In fact, sharing crap like music tracks has a strictly negative commercial value. Uploader pays for using the net, downloader pays for using the net, and both waste time (=money) on listening to some madman torture his guitar. No matter where we look, it's a commercial loss all over. This is as non-commercial as it gets.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Friday April 24 2015, @11:14PM
A choir chat accepts donations has to do with money as well, but you probably don't want your laws to apply to them.
A person who makes a copy of software for you in return for manual labor has no money or commodities involved, but you probably would want a law to apply to them.
It is hard for a person to see that their own definitions are ambiguous, but your distinction of "commercial" is arbitrary and not a logical qualifier for any public policy. Whether or not an intent is prosecutable should never depend on yours or anyone else's definition of commercial, because it is not objective.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @11:42PM
Of course I do. Money transactions take place which have to be reported and taxed in most jurisdictions. This is clearly a commercial activity.
I don't understand. Making a copy of software is so cheap, it is essentially costless. Who would pay for it?
I am not a lawyer or a legislator, but what you are saying makes no sense to me. Surely IRS has a way of telling where commercial transactions take place, because it's taxing them. So when someone has to report income from sharing files, they also have to obey the copyright. Wow, that was easy, right? So an ad-supported file-sharing website (like TPB or kickass.to) would have to obey copyright, but a gratis and ad-free website would not.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:04AM
An ad-supported website is not making money off of selling the content, as they would make money even if someone visited but downloaded nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @03:02AM
Value != price. He's referring to people who make the content available for others that has no price.
And I disagree with him. Copyright simply should not exist in any form.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Saturday April 25 2015, @05:33AM
Then you agree with me. I oppose copyright on the grounds of free speech and jurisdiction, among other things. By jurisdiction, I mean this: you can't enforce copyright without a world government. All you have to do is change jurisdictions, copy, and return.
Few people know that the reason copyright is in the constitution at all is because state governments couldn't enforce it. So it was turned over to the federal government to attempt to enforce. Now there is no way to enforce copyright without a world police, which is so opposed to the concept and benefits of a republican government that it shouldn't require further opposition.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 25 2015, @09:50PM
I agree that it shouldn't apply to non-commercial file sharing, and in fact I encourage people to share my books. They're all free to download from my web site.
However, present copyright lengths are greatly hindering an article in an upcoming book that originally had the lyrics to the last two songs on Dark Side of the Moon; they added to the substance of the story ("Dork Side of the Moon", you may have seen it at slashdot a few years ago). In the book I have to cut them into fair-use sized snippets. Those songs should be in the public domain by now, being over 40 years old.
You say "copyright, not patents". Imagine how technology would suffer if patents lasted 95 years? That is how art and literature (especially music) are suffering! Like science and technology, art and literature come from what has come before. "I stand on the shoulders of giants." The giants, unfortunately, are illegal.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 25 2015, @09:39PM
I see you're both young and you've never written anything worth holding a copyright. Isaac Asimov didn't get a dime for his Hugo-winning Foundation trilogy for ten years after it was first published -- his publisher had no decent merchandising. After Doubleday bought the rights, he finally started getting royalties.
Five years may seem like a long time to you, kid, but it ain't. Had your incredibly ignorant idea been implemented, the only ones to profit from Asimov's work would have been Doubleday and all other publishers.
Having read that, you may be surprised by a snippet of my next book:
Far more reasonable is a twenty year term, extendable for another fifteen. Also, any work "out of print" for over five years should enter the public domain.
Kids... sheesh. BTW, electronic versions of my books are free on my website.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 28 2015, @08:22PM
I see you're both young
No, there's nothing to indicate that that person is young. You're just illogical. You seem to think that if a person believes something that you disagree with, and you don't know who they are, you are justified in simply in assuming they are young. You haven't even provided any scientific evidence that that sort of thinking is far more likely to be common amongst young people, and yet you simply assert this as a fact. Not only is this illogical, but it is also irrelevant to whether or not their arguments are correct; it's just needless filler likely used for poisoning the well.
Other possibilities:
1) People have different experiences and knowledge than you do. What if they believe it's a viable idea because of their own knowledge and experiences? That does not make them young.
2) People have different priorities than you do. What if they prioritize culture over edge cases of someone personally profiting from extremely long copyrights.
And there could be more, but you'll never know if you shut your brain off.
you've never written anything worth holding a copyright.
Same thing here. Value is subjective, so you cannot assert that they've never written anything worth holding a copyright as a fact. That is just your opinion, and your unsubstantiated opinion, at that. I think it is very arrogant of you to assume that everyone who has written something "worth holding a copyright" must agree with your opinions.
Isaac Asimov didn't get a dime for his Hugo-winning Foundation trilogy for ten years after it was first published -- his publisher had no decent merchandising. After Doubleday bought the rights, he finally started getting royalties.
Pointing to a particular example, or even quite a few, does not prove that the idea the AC proposed is flawed in general.
Far more reasonable is a twenty year term, extendable for another fifteen. Also, any work "out of print" for over five years should enter the public domain.
I've seen people say that it is unreasonable for copyright to expire in the author's lifetime *at all*. The mere idea of it is simply insane to them, and they would make the same assumptions you have made (that you are a child and/or have not made anything of value). Funny how that works. Everyone you disagree with is young until proven otherwise.
Well, for me, the only reasonable solution is to get rid of copyright entirely, though I will settle for making it weaker in the meantime.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:02PM
No, there's nothing to indicate that that person is young.
Yes, there is. When you're 25, 14 years is a damned long time. Get much past 40 and you'll see it isn't.
What if they prioritize culture over edge cases of someone personally profiting from extremely long copyrights.
I'm one who prioritizes culture over what you term "edge cases." Copyright is ridiculously long, but 14 years with a six year extension is ridiculously short.
I've seen people say that it is unreasonable for copyright to expire in the author's lifetime *at all*.
So have I, an example is JRR Tolkien. Now, some copyrights should be longer than others; five years isn't too short for software because it's obsolete so quickly. Music maybe ten or fifteen because it's too easy for a songwriter to infringe by accident.
But again, without copyright, only people like me who don't have to work could write much. Were it not for Britain's generous welfare, you would most likely never seen Harry Potter. Neil R. Jones is often criticized for not being very prolific, but he had a day job as a New York State bureaucrat. John Campbell stopped writing when he became editor of Amazing. Had he continued writing the "golden age of SF" might not have happened.
If the world gets to the point where half the population doesn't need to work, we'll no longer need copyright because folks can concentrate on their music or writing and not have to chase money. But if you get rid of copyright now, you're going to see far fewer books and far less music.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday May 01 2015, @12:08AM
Yes, there is. When you're 25, 14 years is a damned long time.
Whether something qualifies as a "long time" for someone is subjective. Present your scientific evidence that people "much past 40" all agree with you. I'll present a single counterexample: I don't agree with you. You seem to think that this is an objective matter, but it really isn't.
Furthermore, the person did not say "14 years is a damned long time", or anything such as that; they probably just felt as if that is enough time for most authors to make money.
I'm one who prioritizes culture over what you term "edge cases."
By "prioritizes culture", I was referring to the public domain. But there is also your point of view. The point is, not everyone has the exact same priorities and can see things differently.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by geb on Friday April 24 2015, @02:30PM
In my constituency, the local MP candidate for the Green party is far too green for my tastes. That's green, as in inexperienced.
I like a lot of the ideas that the central party are proposing, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for a 20 year old whose blog is entirely filled with shouty slogan-type messages pointing out what others have done wrong.
I half wish that I could vote "Green, but not this guy"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Friday April 24 2015, @02:37PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lhsi on Friday April 24 2015, @02:48PM
if they get a reasonable number of votes, then it encourages someone more experienced to stand next time.
Also, if they get enough votes for the other parties to notice, they might consider changing their stance on some issues in order to attempt to gain back lost votes.
(Score: 2) by geb on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM
There's not the slightest chance that the Green candidate will be elected here. To make matters worse, this is one constituency where both Labour or Conservative have a chance of getting in. A protest vote for a minor party really could help their opposition. I'm not going to do the "lesser of two evils" kind of tactical voting, but it's all too easy to imagine a close run where I'd regret the outcome.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday April 24 2015, @06:06PM
That's short-term thinking. If you only think about the very next election, the candidates will only continue to get more and more evil.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @06:11PM
Seems to me, that short term voting is exactly what is needed to remove evil elected officials.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @09:23PM
My local Green would-be MP is a Holocaust denier according to some people who heard him speak :-( I really, really want to vote Green, but I can't vote for such a person. And I can't understand why the party hasn't thrown him out :-( I don't want him to think that he's got away with it. Oh well, it looks like I'll be voting Labour in this safe Tory seat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @07:58PM
I'm not sure I should really say this, but here goes nothing.... I joined the Green Party because I'm very upset about the lurch to the right that British politics has taken over the last couple of decades. I don't agree with all of their policies (energy and defence) but people are poor, sick, starving and homeless... Anyway I heard first hand from a witness that the local candidate thinks that the Holocaust didn't really happen and that people who serve in the armed forces are basically murderers. It's hard to believe that a mature man with an education in a progressive political party would believe such crap let alone say it in public in front of a bunch of school kids. I can't bring myself to vote for the guy, not that my lone vote will make much difference but I did pony up for membership with a small donation on top. I don't want to name the guy for fear of getting done for slander, libel, defamation or whatever.... But he did say it there were many witnesses (students and teachers) and they were told not to speak to the press, Posting AC for obvious reasons. I can not vote for a Holocaust denier. That's what you'd expect from the lunatic fringe of UKIP or the mainstream BNP! :-(
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Friday April 24 2015, @10:28PM
People vote too much on a candidate though, instead of strategically. Your vote does not even matter. And on the far off chance that he would actually make it, he could not possibly be worse than some of the other candidates. Think of it as an experiment. And if the greens do get more than the usual amount of votes, it just might bring some change (because the bigger parties will start worrying).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 26 2015, @05:01AM
People vote too much on a candidate though
Are you sure? Most people mindlessly vote for a party from what I see.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Friday April 24 2015, @02:32PM
I'm really surprised at this. Most creative works (film, books, music) have a large spike of initial income. The numbers I saw a few years ago showed that, for most works, more than half of the income comes within the first 18 months, more than half of the rest within the next 18 months. Reducing copyright to 3 years would therefore only reduce income by 25%. Reducing it to 14 years would primarily affect the incomes of people who produce one work that is largely unknown for a long time, and those who are raking it in to such a degree that they could quite happily stop getting anything well before the 14 years is up and still never have to work another day to afford a lavish lifestyle.
I've also seen it argued that shorter copyrights also help authors because they increase the value of new works to publishers. When 14-year copyrights were proposed to a panel of science fiction authors a few years ago, they were roundly criticised: they wanted 7, at most.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Friday April 24 2015, @03:03PM
The problem is the mindset of corporate executives, which can be roughly summarised as "Keep it like the Kaiser". In fairness, they don't want to see any asset (even abstract ones like copyright IP) devalued - doesn't look good on the quarterly spreadsheet. However, it's really representative of short-term thinking and putting their own paychecks ahead of everyone else.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 24 2015, @03:51PM
Ideas like the Long Tail encourage holding on to rights for the longest time possible to ensure every penny is squeezed out of them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @04:25PM
The "Long Tail" doesn't mean long as in time, but rather a statistical tail in the sense of stocking a broad inventory where the large number of low sales volume items add up to a significant amount compared to the small number of best-sellers. The "Long Tail" doesn't necessarily encourage any particular copyright policy as far as I understand it, just that there is profit to be had in not focusing too heavily.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM
Not necessarily - the long tail refers to pretty much all relatively unpopular product. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that never had more than fringe appeal, but there's also a lot of oldies that are still generating a trickle of profit. Switch to a 14 year copyright term and you'd pretty much destroy the market for the "Complete works of The Beatles - 60th anniversary compendium", everyone interested would have already downloaded all the songs anyway.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wantkitteh on Friday April 24 2015, @11:24PM
Of course the Long Tail is referring to time - those broad inventories you refer to are, in practice, back-catalogues. Copyright extensions protect the size of those catalogues, albeit at the expense of the public domain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday April 24 2015, @03:16PM
The problem here is that these artists are seeing their work in much the same way American working and middle class see wealth. They're sure that their work is going to be a sleeper hit soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @03:19PM
Hollywood films, video games, "club" pop music singles, and some non-fiction books (e.g. biographies of celebs) certainly make most of their money within a couple years, or five at most. That's because they're targeting a mass audience. For films and science fiction, a lot of the appeal is giving their target audience something to talk about with friends, coworkers, and dates (or conventioneers for the sci fi crowd :-).
Conversely, if you don't see that hit film, you might be left out of part of a conversation.
Serious fiction, classical and jazz music, and many non-fiction books generally don't follow this sales trend though. They can make slow but steady sales for decades; some works of fiction are entirely unknown until they are somehow "discovered" many years after publication and become best-sellers, even after the author's death.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by snick on Friday April 24 2015, @03:35PM
It is all about maintaining scarcity.
If everything over 14 years old were in the public domain, then someone could open a "FreeFlix" or "FreeTunes" or "FreePub" site, that only hosted PD content, paid no royalties to anyone, and still had an amazing catalog to choose from.
The studios/labels/publishing houses don't want to have to compete against their own back catalog.
(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM
So how about make it ten years and let them renew 7 times. If it's not renewed, it becomes public domain. It gives them 80 years if they're still in business and still interested. It gives abandonware legal standing in the public domain. It's win-win.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 24 2015, @05:27PM
That only works if DRM is prohibited. If copyright is limited in that way, and DRM is legal, then they can sell things that only work as long as the seller keeps a "token" site running...and you can only play the work if you've got an internet connection and the seller's "token" site is running. Some games have already done this, and become unusable while those that bought them are still playing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday April 24 2015, @06:06PM
The only real rule of copyright law at this point seems to be: "Thou shalt not allow Mickey Mouse to pass into the public domain".
To provide a bit of a story of how ridiculous the current copyright regime is: My grandfather was a musician. Mostly because of my grandfather's folk song collection work, my family gets a fairly small check once a year, even though he died 35 years ago (we send the money to a charity in the area where he collected the songs) and he did most of his work over 50 years ago. As for why we don't release his work into the public domain, if we release our claim on it, all that happens is that ASCAP gets what we were getting.
And of course all the focus on the money of copyright ignores the other motivations for doing artistic work. For example, I have to think that granddad got a bit of gratification because one of the songs he collected became a hit for Lonnie Donegan, and also was the first recording ever made by a couple of nobodies named Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Rickter on Friday April 24 2015, @08:16PM
I think we need a tiered IP structure:
7 years for initial copyright, possibly with significant renewal fees for a few years of extension, say 1% of total revenue (cumulative) /year. So your blockbuster movie that makes $300M domestic box office and other pay per view and DVD sales? $3M to renew for year 8. If you don't foresee more profit than that, then you don't renew. The fee for year 9 goes up by the amount of the sales from that year.
30 years of format shifting control, So if you write a book or video game, you should have a significant amount of time to sell the rights to a studio who would make a movie out of it, and have time to create the work, but if they fail, you still have enough control to hire another company. (We don't want a five year window, where Universal Studios makes a movie with your OK, but then delays releasing until 5 years and week after publication, then publishes the movie under fair use and gives the writer no profits, and has a jump on all of the other studios due to their agreement with the author.)
30 years of derivative/sequel work limit: So, only George Lucas/Lucas Arts/Disney could create a for profit movie in the Star Wars universe for 30 years, until 2007, then anybody could create Star Wars movies. So, nobody could create a Mickey Mouse work for 30 years from first usage. (You couldn't extend this forever, or nobody will ever get to make derivative works, which is what we are trying to get away from.) Beyond that time, works that are not done with the permission of the original author and most recent rights holder, must clearly state that they are not associated with the original authors, so customers don't blame the original creator for crappy work done by the derivatives. So you could have several groups working on Star Wars derivative movies, books, and games, competing with each other, and the ones that give the best deal to artists & actors probably will make the best movies, and get the most business. They would only enjoy the 7 year copyright limit for each work.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday April 25 2015, @01:18PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Friday April 24 2015, @11:05PM
The studios/labels/publishing houses don't want to have to compete against their own back catalog.
And for good reason! Everything they come out with now is complete crap!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AndyTheAbsurd on Friday April 24 2015, @04:38PM
The science fiction authors have most likely read Spider Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants [spiderrobinson.com]" (Audio version, MP3 format [libsyn.com] if you don't want to get caught reading fiction at work). It makes wonderful points about the difficulties that accompany the path of infinite extension of copyright that we seem to be going down. Personally, I think that the entire story should be read, aloud, in chambers, with attendance required, before ANY vote is taken on altering copyright.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Saturday April 25 2015, @03:14AM
Thank you so very much for that link! I found the story itself to be quite thought-provoking and am downloading the MP3 even as I right this. I concur with your assessment that this should be mandatory reading prior to any vote being taken on altering copyright.
This one comment has made worthwhile many a late night (and way too early morning) I've invested in supporting this site!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @05:43PM
Reducing copyright to 3 years would therefore only reduce income by 25%. Reducing it to 14 years would primarily affect the incomes of people who produce one work that is largely unknown for a long time,
Probably true for things like books and music.
But 3 years might also affect the follow-on things, like movies made from books.
I could see something Harry Potter first book made into a Movie before the second book was even finished by people not associated with the author, That might seem a little unfair when you thin about it.
But 14 years would probably handle that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @06:03PM
Someone uses their own resources to produce a product is not unfair.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday April 24 2015, @02:37PM
I've been wondering what a Green and Pirate party merger would look like. Would it gain more voters than it loses? I'm guessing most Pirate Party supporters are also green. I'm not too sure about the other direction.
Evidently authors are still big believers in copyright. I don't see that group leading the charge for copyright reform, no. All that insightful writing they do, poking at the establishment, but when it comes to what they perceive to be their own self interest even when it really isn't, they flop. The rest of us will have to drag them kicking and screaming over to the new business models revolving around patronage and crowdfunding.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday April 24 2015, @03:10PM
I've been wondering what a Green and Pirate party merger would look like.
That would look like this: http://www.greens-efa.eu/ [greens-efa.eu]
N.B. may contain more left-wing-nationalists than pirates. Think: Catalunya, Scotland, Russians in Latvia.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by archshade on Friday April 24 2015, @03:22PM
Although the Greens and the pirates share many policies they do differ in some places (mainly priorities). This blog post has a reason from the Pirate side for not merging
https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blogs/david-elston/why-im-not-green [pirateparty.org.uk]
I think a Green Pirate Party (Jolly Verde?) party has a bigger issue of trying to get the greens to mark themselves with the pirate brush. Many people who don't really have any understanding of what the Pirate Party is about nor the technological aspects of there stance. Lots of people think that pirate just want free (as in beer) stuff. People think that PP is against creative producers being able to charge for their materials. This is of course not true but lots of people see the whole pirate movement as an attempt to post-rationalise there downloading of content. Because of this I think PP needs to re-brand, I don't think that much needs to change just the name really. Hopefully then they can then do interviews without having to go though the whole film/video piracy debate all the time (as this talk takes longer than any slot they ever get).
The complete misunderstanding of the majority of PP policies (or ignorance of them and why they even matter) is shared by the majority of the electorate including most Green voters and party members. I can see no way that the Greens would join up with PP as they just don't understand what PP are truly about.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SpockLogic on Friday April 24 2015, @07:29PM
I've been wondering what a Green and Pirate party merger would look like.
Sea-sickness was the first thing to come to mind.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @02:46PM
I want to be able to break into people's houses and steal their property with impunity; I would personally gain from it, so it must be good. These people have no perspective about what's best for society in the long run, and think only about making money for themselves. Their government monopolies over implementations of ideas haven't even been scientifically demonstrated to be overall beneficial to begin with, and if you factor in the rights copyright interferes with (such as freedom of speech and private property rights), things don't look very good. But I feel as if I personally benefit from it, so who cares?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:10AM
You must be new here.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 26 2015, @04:47AM
The big difference here is if you went into someone's house and took stuff, you took physical property, thus denying the homeowner they use of it.
I see this whole thing boiling down to something as simple as if you are in Disneyland, do you have a right to take a picture?
Many businesses state forthright when you first do business with them ( especially financial institutions ) that they will share the information they gather about you.
Nothing I can do about it, but not do business with them.
Even then, they compile dossiers on me. ( Equifax, TRW, TransUnion, Experian, and don't even get me started on insurance databases... ).
Nobody comes down on them for collecting, storing, and sharing data on me, regardless of what my take on it is. "They" can do whatever they want, and not much I can do about it.
A lot of us have felt the same way about file sharing as businesses feel about sharing personal data. Businesses don't like us to do it, and they are trying to stop it.
Sure, I could make money too with a copyright on my individual name, and exact royalties for their copying it. Good luck trying to collect, though. I could claim that corporations are making money by violating my business methods... however could I lobby Congress to pass law mandating that stance?
Congressmen are being lobbied to hound individuals for doing the exact thing corporations are doing. Congress has the chore of telling the American people who have "Pledged allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.....in return for ... Justice for All", and telling them the goose can do it but its illegal for the gander to do it too.
They have already passed so much law no-one can keep track of it all.
When a machine gets so clogged up with frivolous threads, it comes time to clean house and reboot the damned thing.
I believe our own "operating system" has bloated with memory leak so badly that it can barely function, let alone produce enough to sustain ourselves. For now, we are still keeping the engine running on loans.
I just get a bad feeling about this.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 26 2015, @05:04AM
The big difference here is if you went into someone's house and took stuff, you took physical property, thus denying the homeowner they use of it.
Obviously. The point is that these entitled people who think they deserve insane copyright terms at the expense of our culture only think so because they think copyright personally benefits them or people like them. You can use that logic to justify any atrocity. It says nothing about what is good for society as a whole.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by WillR on Friday April 24 2015, @02:52PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @03:15PM
1710. What was the average lifespan back then about half of what it is now?
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 24 2015, @03:57PM
With a 14-year term, the first Harry Potter film would be due out of copyright in 6 months. I was going to say "The Fast And The Furious franchise would have missed out out-living the copyright on the original by weeks", but who knows how many more will splutter out of the pipeline before they finally stop making them?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Friday April 24 2015, @04:03PM
...oh, and the whole F&F franchise has a total production budget so far of $844m, it's made $3.5b box so far. I don't think the argument that Hollywood will fall apart if the copyright terms are reduced holds a single drop of water. Couldn't say about other content producers though.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Friday April 24 2015, @04:57PM
I just saw something on Facebook saying that Vin Diesel announced something about "Furious 8", so at least one more. (Also what the hell is up with the naming of those movies? I don't mind a little inconsistency but that series is getting ridiculous about it.) On the other hand, agreeing to be in another F&F movie is what got Vin Diesel the rights to the character of Riddick, so hopefully he'll use what he makes off the current and next F&F to make another one of those that *actually* resolves *something* in that universe.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @06:19PM
Vin Diesel made F&F 7 so we could make a deal on his pet project Hannibal The Conqueror. So we might see htc before the next Riddick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @03:59PM
~36 [ourworldindata.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by choose another one on Friday April 24 2015, @04:18PM
Life expectancy gives a misleading impression because it is (was) heavily skewed by high infant and child mortality.
For instance in medieval Britain life expectancy _at_ _birth_ was about 30 - less than half what it is now. However, if you reached the age of 21 (and might be publishing something) then male life expectancy was over 60. By 1700s it would be likely have been higher still, definitely a lot more than half what it is now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @06:29PM
So for all we have spent on the medical field all we got was much fewer dead babies and 15 years to enjoy arthritis and altimeters?
On the low end it is fantastic. On the high end, as someone who has taken care of relatives lingering on for as much as 20 years past what could be considered a life worth living, I am not at all prepared for those "benefits".
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:07AM
So for all we have spent on the medical field all we got was much fewer dead babies and 15 years to enjoy arthritis and altimeters?
To be fair, it is kind of fun seeing how high up you have climbed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @04:59PM
Most popular movies make a fair bit of their money in a few months. 14 years is plenty of time.
Furthermore 14 years puts more pressure on software companies like Microsoft to make stuff that's actually better than their old stuff rather than shit out whatever crap they have.
As for those in the music industry, having copyright at 14 years will probably weaken the labels, which is likely a good thing for performers and musicians.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @03:11PM
This would not be great for free software. To make things symmetric the source code of proprietary software needs to be made available.
Originally the pirate party proposed such a short copyright term, hence https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html [gnu.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Wootery on Friday April 24 2015, @03:18PM
14 years is still quite a long time, though. If you forked the Linux kernel of 14 years ago, you'd be so far behind the modern kernel that you'd surely be nuts not to just go with, say, FreeBSD.
I don't think a 14 year copyright term would render copyleft totally ineffective. Things progress a long way in software, in 14 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @05:44PM
I don't see why. There is much 14 year old open source software that I would be interested in using, most software dates quickly, games are a bit of an exception, but there aren't many good open source games. And if anyone can make anything out of open source software that is 14 years old by closing it up and improving it, then good luck to them.
And also, the source code to 14 year old code would be out of copyright along with the binaries, you'd just need to find a copy of it. I don't think it would be right to compel anyone to provide a copy of it though.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Saturday April 25 2015, @10:53AM
Software is a special case anyway. 14 years or 70 years+ do not matter much. Most 14 year old software is not that useful if it just comes as a binary.
To fix this, copyright should only be awarded to software for which complete source code is submitted to a copyright office. After copyright expires, source code should be made available.
This should have been implemented from the beginning actually. If you do not want to show the code (after a certain time to let you earn some $$), you are not worthy of a state given monopoly.
The problem with binary software is that it limits how society can use it. You can adapt a Shakespeare play, but you cannot adapt a 20 year old version of wordperfect. Future inventors and developers therefore cannot profit from the works of the past, as they cannot see how it was done. The ability to interact with old hardware, the ability to read ancient file formats, clever algorithms to do things, etc are all lost because of this. It hampers progress and wastes money. We are doomed to reinvent the wheel all the time because of the stupidity and greed of a few people.
GNU helps to address the problem, and perhaps it will eventually be the solution, but only if it manages to mostly kill the proprietary software industry. That would not have been been necessary if reasonable copyright terms with availability of software had been implemented from the start.
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Friday April 24 2015, @03:21PM
I like this idea. And while we are at this, the same should be with patents: after 14 years since publication the patent becomes public domain.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 24 2015, @05:37PM
The situation is a little different with patents, and there are actually a few legitimate reasons why you might want a longer term on patents than copyright. Copyright exists for finished works. If you've got copyright over something, it's ready to sell. Patents can be granted on ideas alone though. You get the patent, *then* you look for funding to build the damn thing and test it out. And it's certainly possible that you could get a patent only to find that the technology you need to build the device either doesn't exist or isn't economically viable yet.
Suppose you find a way to make aluminum recycling 10% more efficient. But you find out that it would need the world's largest supercomputer to actually run the calculations to do it on a commercial scale. You patent is pretty much worthless, but in ten years when you can get that level of processing power in a single server rack, your patent might become quite valuable. And no, you can't just sell that patent when you first come up with it, because the entire point of patents is that they're public, so the company you'd sell it to knows it's not viable yet, and they know the patent will be close to expiring before it's actually feasible. So rather than buying the patent, they'll just wait it out.
On the other hand, plenty of people will say you shouldn't get a patent until you can demonstrate a working prototype, which would pretty much solve that problem. And that seems reasonable to me. That does make a large number of potential patents only accessible by large organizations (good luck patenting a new type of nuclear reactor on your own...) but that's really not very different from our current situation anyway.
I also think we need to break up copyrights (and probably patents too) into various classes. We've got books that are thousands of years old that sell for the same price as something written yesterday. But it's hard to even find a videogame from ten or twenty years ago. Hard to even find hardware to run it sometimes. Different forms of media have different expected lifespans. Variable lengths (with steeply increasing prices) could fix that though; EA probably won't pay to register Call of Duty 12 for twenty years if they plan on shutting down the activation servers in five.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @06:02PM
A nit to pick.....
Patents can be granted on ideas alone though.
I don't think you can patent an idea.
According to the USPTO:
What can be patented - utility patents are provided for a new, nonobvious and useful:
Process
Machine
Article of manufacture
Composition of matter
Improvement of any of the above
Note: In addition to utility patents, encompassing one of the categories above, patent protection is available for (1) ornamental design of an article of manufacture or (2) asexually reproduced plant varieties by design and plant patents.
What cannot be patented:
Laws of nature
Physical phenomena
Abstract ideas
Literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works (these can be Copyright protected). Go to the Copyright Office .
Inventions which are:
Not useful (such as perpetual motion machines); or
Offensive to public morality
Invention must also be:
Novel
Nonobvious
Adequately described or enabled (for one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention)
Claimed by the inventor in clear and definite terms
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 24 2015, @06:13PM
That simply says that it must be a specific type of idea. You can't patent just any random idea, but the patent is still granted on the idea alone, not the implementation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @06:47PM
the patent is still granted on the idea alone, not the implementation.
NO. Not in the U.S.
Invention must also be:
Novel
Nonobvious
Adequately described or enabled (for one of ordinary skill in the art) to make and use the invention
Its not adequate to simply write down your idea, You can't say: I patent the idea of self mating socks, and hope they come about somehow so you can patent troll the manufacturer. You need to define an implementation, method of manufacture, in sufficient detail such that any sock manufacturer could produce them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 24 2015, @07:16PM
Right. You need to *define* the implementation and method of manufacture. You don't need to actually implement it. You need *the idea* of how to do it. Again, you patent a specific type of idea, not a physical good. And note that nowhere does it say the idea has to actually be feasible. Project Orion (nuclear bomb powered spaceship) could certainly be patented, you could easily describe it in sufficient detail, but there's no way in hell it would be practical for anyone to actually build the thing with our current technology.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @09:44PM
And note that nowhere does it say the idea has to actually be feasible.
Again, that is incorrect.
What cannot be patented:
Inventions which are:
Not useful (such as perpetual motion machines);
This following information was taken from the USPTO website
http://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents#heading-4 [uspto.gov]
The patent law specifies that the subject matter must be “useful.” The term “useful” in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent.
...
A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine, manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or suggestion of the new machine. A complete description of the actual machine or other subject matter for which a patent is sought is required.
See also http://www.uspto.gov/help/patent-help [uspto.gov] (Its a huge page, search for "How do I know if my invention is patentable?"
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:24AM
Wouldn't a perpetual motion machine be quite useful? Because it would basically be producing free energy.
The problem is that it isn't *possible* as far as we know.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Saturday April 25 2015, @04:42AM
Those rules don't say it needs to be feasible, they say it needs to be physically possible. Again, look at something like Project Orion. You could patent that. If you built it, it would function as intended, and it would serve a useful purpose. The fact that nobody would ever fianance it, the fact that it might cause massive environmental destruction, even the fact that we might have nothing capable of lifting it high enough to launch...all of that is irrelevant. You can still patent it. And maybe someday we'll solve those problems and it'll be useful. Or you can patent lab grown hamburger meat that costs a million dollars per gram too, even though it may be decades before it's cheap enough to sell to McDonald's.
And yeah, I'm not saying patenting a *suggestion* is possible, I'm just saying you don't need to build a prototype. You need some CAD drawings maybe. So yes, it can cost the entire global GDP to build the damn thing, you can still patent it, because the cost is irrelevant and you don't have to actually build it. It can require a million dollars of resources to produce one dollar of product, that's also irrelevent.
So, suppose you patent something that would work, but is too expensive or too slow because it requires an absurd amount of processing power. Processing power gets cheaper and faster every year. The patent is worthless today; and it's worthless forever if it expires before processing power gets cheap enough to make it profitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @09:19PM
Until 1880, the Patent Office required you to submit a model of your device. [wikipedia.org]
You still have to submit a drawing of your gadget.
There's even a preferred technique [tqn.com] as well as people who specialize in that.
Isn't it interesting that you DON'T have to submit source code for your idea to get a patent on software?
How exactly does that "promote the progress of science and useful arts"?
...and it has taken -way- too long to get to Alice. [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday April 24 2015, @03:32PM
The Telegraph article is interesting to read, and what's even better is they ask a spokesman for the Green Party to clarify, and this spokesman referred back to a fascinating scientific (well, economic anyway, it's debatable whether economy is a science) article from 2007:
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optimal-copyright-term-is-14-years/ [arstechnica.com]
This referred to an article by the Cambridge economist Rufus Pollock who had *calculated* that the optimum copyright duration for society is in fact 14 years.
So now here we are 8 years later, and copyright duration in the EU is still "70 years post mortem auctoris", and I wonder: does anyone know if this calculation has ever been refuted / challenged / delegated to the dustbin of history / ridiculed?
Because *if not*, then the current scientific consensus on optimum copyright length, is in fact still that 14 years from Pollock. And it will stay 14 years, until somebody can convince us with a better model calculation that it should be a different number, or the same number but a different methodology.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday April 24 2015, @05:49PM
I propose that some progress is better than no progress and that as a first move all future copyright durations should be half of what they are now, as a start. We can debate other mechanisms later.
The problem is how do you get this stuff implemented? You will be fighting mega-corps. (Rule of thumb: Max copyright duration is always just a little longer than how long ago Snow White came out.) Either way I wish we could mobilize and get this done, at least for the benefit of mankind.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday April 24 2015, @07:35PM
Not only the length, but there needs to be some "use it or lose it" aspect to copyright so that abandoned works revert to the public domain after a certain time if no one does anything to keep them. Like old software from the 1980s which has been abandoned, but is still under copyright and will not be in the public domain (in the USA) until I am dead or too old to care.
What copyright needs is a term plus a formal renewal by whoever holds the copyright. After five years, or whatever, the copyright holder has to file for an extension. If no one does, then the work reverts to the public domain.
This would allow abandoned software, out of print music, and so on to be in the public domain. Right now, this kind of stuff is under copyright even if the copyright holder can't be identified.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 27 2015, @04:02PM
Disney can shell out to have forever copyrights on their old crap like they want. If a property is so good that a renewed copyright is worthwhile then it should be easy to monetize it and renew. If there was a random game/thing/show/book from the 1980s that I loved and it only ever sold 1,000 copies the copyright owner probably doesn't care and it isn't worth renewing so it can go public sooner.
Not my idea but it is fantastic. I don't remember if they said it should be an exponential increase or an exception that the first time be free, but I think it should,
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Friday April 24 2015, @11:16PM
Okay, I like that! Half of 70 years is easy enough to determine... but how do you determine half of the author's life?
;-)
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Saturday April 25 2015, @01:53AM
For a 'modest' fee, I can set you up with Guido. With Guido on the job, you can control that pesky variable. ;-)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @07:09PM
but, the Greens are like the 9th largest party in the UK. Regional nationalists have like ten times their number of seats. There's absolutely no way they'll be in government (including within a coalition) this election or the next, or the one after that, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by moondrake on Friday April 24 2015, @10:43PM
What's up with this style of thinking. By this logic, nothing would ever change. People have to get rid of the idea that they should not vote for a candidate because he will never make it, because that is a self-fulfilling prophecy...
Its not a horse-race, you do not vote to win, but to change things.