[HN Gopher] January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 192...
___________________________________________________________________
January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to
all
Author : CharlesW
Score : 706 points
Date : 2022-12-20 20:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (web.law.duke.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.law.duke.edu)
| jl6 wrote:
| Fun copyright fact: content created today by anyone under 20 is
| likely to still enjoy copyright protection in the year 2151, when
| Star Trek Enterprise is set.
| aaron695 wrote:
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Excuse my ignorance: does this mean that anybody can "legally"
| (for example) torrent-download Metropolis? Or that can be a
| "free" Netflix-alternative created today with movies that are
| part of the public domain?
|
| Edit: a lot of answers, thanks! But still, still kinda discussed.
| It certainly is an interesting topic.
| m348e912 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBnMCAIuQg It's available on
| YouTube. I don't think the copyright owners care too much at
| this point to have it taken down.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Broadly, yes.
|
| But there are details you'd want to ask a lawyer about. Things
| like if you rip one of those movies from a DVD, and that DVD
| was made more recently, you have to be careful not to include
| any creative work done more recently - for example an adjusted
| end credits sequence, coloring, restoration work, or minor re-
| editing.
| chr-s wrote:
| You'll often find these old silent movies with a more
| recently recorded soundtrack which may still be under
| copyright.
|
| For truly free film, I believe you'd need to scan a print of
| the film. I'd be interested to know of any efforts to obtain
| and host truly free archival copies of these old films.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| yes, you can now legally torrent metropolis. You can also make
| derivative works (e.g. you personally could make Metropolis 2:
| The Reckoning!) without fear of consequence.
| niij wrote:
| yes
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain :
|
| > Because those rights have expired, anyone can legally use or
| reference those works without permission.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Yes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Internet Archive
| already has torrents of public domain film.
|
| There's also Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks for public
| domain books. Wikimedia Commons has a huge archive of public
| domain images and sound recordings.
| jonah-archive wrote:
| We're having a contest to remix public domain material that
| will be judged at our in-person Public Domain Day party on
| January 20th! Check it out:
| http://blog.archive.org/2022/11/30/public-domain-
| day-2023-re...
| nightpool wrote:
| Yes and yes (in fact, there are already plenty of websites you
| can find out there that do that--many of them seem to just be
| ads-filled scraper sites hotlinking / embedding from
| archive.org)
| bricemo wrote:
| I am also trying to figure out what the average person would do
| differently with this information. It is cool and good, but I
| feel like if I wanted to experience any of these I would still
| go buy on Amazon Prime video or pull it up on Spotify or
| torrent. Is there a big change in consumer experience?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Not only can you legally download it, you can burn it to disk
| and sell copies if you wanted to.
| KVFinn wrote:
| >Not only can you legally download it, you can burn it to
| disk and sell copies if you wanted to.
|
| What about a derivative work? Like if somebody recreated the
| film Metropolis into a 3D version, scene by scene. Ultimately
| the same film but using Blender or whatever so every scene is
| perfect as a 3D movie. Is that new film copyrighted to the
| person who did this work now?
| easybake wrote:
| r-r-r-remix...
| 33955985 wrote:
| Copyright should be life of the author/s full stop.
| loonster wrote:
| No publisher would want to sign a contract with an author that
| isn't likely to live much longer. It needs to be either a fixed
| amount, or Life + something.
| ars wrote:
| It should be life of author or 40 years, whichever comes
| later.
|
| Corporations and the like get 40 years.
| t-writescode wrote:
| That would not protect the author's family in case they died
| shortly after they wrote their final book "to help their family
| survive".
|
| It also would encourage authors to have "unexpected deaths".
|
| I'm a fan of 20 + 20.
| 33955985 wrote:
| Then make your children co-authors.
| chihuahua wrote:
| But then we'd get sob stories about how this condemns Walt
| Disney's great-great-grandchildren to starving in the street.
| [deleted]
| gus_massa wrote:
| You also get sob stories about the children of a famous
| singer that just died in a plane accident at the top of their
| carrier.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Hmm, how hard is Der Steppenwolf to read? I'm a (lapsed)
| intermediate level German speaker, but I remember reading the
| first bit of it in English in high school and liking it.
|
| Also, https://www.fadedpage.com/ has stuff freely available under
| Canadian copyright law, which seems to have stuff from the 50s
| (70 years maybe?).
| ALittleLight wrote:
| It's absolutely shameful that public domain has been pushed so
| far back. I say make it ten years max.
| not2b wrote:
| The Berne Convention (an international agreement) requires at
| least 50 years of protection, and the US signed it. But 50 is a
| lot less than 95.
| incompatible wrote:
| Copyright enthusiasts have done their best to have the 50 or
| 70 year term written into as many trade agreements as
| possible, e.g., WTO.
|
| However, the US probably has enough weight that other
| countries would just have to adapt if it wanted a shorter
| term, but at present there's no evidence of much political
| efforts for one.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I always wondered what strings hold the Berne Convention (and
| similar treaties) together. It seems like they got adopted by
| incredibly broad swathes of countries-- ones with wildly
| different social and economic needs and norms. Why would
| countries that can't even agree on any other nuts-and-bolts
| matter suddenly all line up to defend Mickey Mouse?
|
| My first guess was promises of reciprocality, but that seems
| like a hard sell to countries without a meaningful IP
| economy.
|
| I can't imagine it being enforced with bullets. There's no
| way to rally troops to defend a copyright that doesn't make
| you look like the bad guy.
|
| Was it smuggled in as part of other trade agreements? (If you
| want to sell us $resource_you_actually_have, you have to also
| agree to worship the almighty circled C?)
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| It was initially signed as a standalone agreement 150 years
| ago for the sake of reciprocity - rightsholders in
| different European countries were unhappy with pirate
| publishers over the border selling their works without
| payment.
|
| Today though pretty much everything in the Berne Convention
| is part of agreements you have to implement to join the
| World Trade Organisation, which is a pretty big motivation
| to abide by it.
| mod50ack wrote:
| 50 years of protection after the death of the author.
| twiddling wrote:
| If AI is the author then what?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Nothing AI created can have copyright under current law.
| mod50ack wrote:
| In the US, indeed. But in the UK the runner of AI can
| hold a copyright. Which I think is stupid but that's
| hardly the first dumb copyright thing.
| not2b wrote:
| For something like img2img with Stable Diffusion, if the
| starting image is copyrighted by someone else I'd expect
| that the output image is a derivative work of the
| starting image.
| mod50ack wrote:
| The question is about new copyright in both cases, not
| subsisting copyright. You hold the copyright to the
| elements originating with you in a derivative work.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The author is the one that records it, not the tool used
| to create it.
| not2b wrote:
| It's 70 in the US now. From the US Copyright Office: "As a
| general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978,
| copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus
| an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a
| pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright
| endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first
| publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its
| creation, whichever expires first. For works first
| published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on
| several factors."
| mod50ack wrote:
| Yes, I know. The requirement of the Berne convention is
| 50 years after death. The US goes twenty years beyond
| that.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Our current copyright is far far too long. 20 years would be far
| more reasonable. We can talk about side issues all we want, but
| at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the ability
| to generate profit. 20 years is more than enough time to profit
| from creative works. Are we as a society really saying that 75+
| years is how much time people ought to be profiting from creative
| works? An absurd proposition in almost any other industry or
| pursuit.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| OTOH, there's a huge amount of content out there that's
| _formally_ and _legally_ in the public domain already but not
| really findable /discoverable via detailed cataloging, or
| easily usable (and reusable) by 21st-c. standards. Zillions of
| random page scans up on Google Books, Hathitrust and the
| Internet Archive. If what you genuinely care about is expanding
| access to the legacy of our intellectual history, the low-
| hanging fruit really is very low.
|
| Beyond clear cases like ensuring preservation of materials that
| are obviously at risk, it's kinda hard to argue and lobby for a
| shorter copyright term when we're collectively ignoring what's
| long been available for the taking.
| bentley wrote:
| I really don't understand your justification here. A
| consequence of Sturgeon+ is that most public domain material
| was unpopular in its day, and only a small fraction of that
| is relevant to most people in 2022. Why does that imply
| copyright terms shouldn't be shortened?
|
| If anything, I argue the opposite: preservation, indexing,
| and curation are all possible and _happening_ on an
| absolutely unimaginable scale thanks to today's technology.
| You see zillions of page scans as a failure because they
| haven't been perfectly curated--I view these zillions as an
| incredible success because now they _can_ be curated. The
| single biggest retardant to a grand unified index of media is
| available human effort, but the next biggest is copyright
| that carves a decades-wide chunk out of otherwise preservable
| works. Reducing copyright terms would not just make more
| works available to be copied; I believe it would stimulate
| interest in preservation and curation by easing access to
| works that are more relevant to average people of today.
|
| + Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crap."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > and only a small fraction of that is relevant to most
| people in 2022
|
| How could you tell, when most of it hasn't even been
| seriously looked at by anyone? Good cataloging is key to
| making existing material more relevant to more people.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Google Books tried to catalogue books. And then had to
| spend 10 years in courts because copyright
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/court-ruling-
| legal...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The whole point of focusing on public domain content is
| that you don't get dragged to court over that.
| dmitriid wrote:
| There are several issues:
|
| - what's "public domain" changes, sometimes retroactively
|
| - orphan works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works
| _in_the_United_Sta...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > The whole point of focusing on public domain content is
| that you don't get dragged to court over that.
|
| Are you familiar with litigation related to Project
| Gutenberg?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg#Copyright
|
| > The website was not accessible within Germany, as a
| result of a court order from S. Fischer Verlag regarding
| the works of Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred
| Doblin. Although they were in the public domain in the
| United States, the German court (Frankfurt am Main
| Regional Court) recognized the infringement of copyrights
| still active in Germany, and asserted that the Project
| Gutenberg website was under German jurisdiction because
| it hosts content in the German language and is accessible
| in Germany.[25] This judgment was confirmed by the
| Frankfurt Court of Appeal on 30 April 2019 (11 U
| 27/18[26]). The Frankfurt Court of Appeal has not given
| permission for a further appeal to the Federal Court of
| Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), however, an application for
| permission to appeal has been filed with the Federal
| Court of Justice. As of 4 October 2020 that application
| was still pending (Federal Court of Justice I ZR 97/19).
| According to Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
| Foundation,[27] "In October 2021, the parties reached a
| settlement agreement. Under the terms of the agreement,
| Project Gutenberg eBooks by the three authors will be
| blocked from Germany until their German copyright
| expires. Under the terms of the settlement, the all-
| Germany block is no longer in place. Other terms of the
| settlement are confidential."
|
| > The website has been blocked in Italy since May
| 2020.[28]
| clarkmoody wrote:
| As it stands, all the myths of our culture are only allowed to
| be told by giant media conglomerates. Nobody but the House of
| Mouse, for instance, can tell the stories of Darth, Luke, Han,
| and Yoda.
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| All of this IP law was written well before the large-scale
| adoption of the internet which has greatly accelerated the
| proliferation of ideas and and largely commoditized ingenuity.
| It's insane we haven't lowered the current timeline. Some
| commenters are mentioning the current folks in power who stand
| to lose a lot pushing back on change. That's probably the most
| plausible reason I can think of but curious of any others.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Another point is software has a short shelf life. 10 years,
| maybe. What's the point of 75 year copyright protection for
| software?
|
| Books - the sales fall off a cliff after a year.
| sfifs wrote:
| Life expectancy is 2.5X what it was when these laws were first
| conceived and the majority of creative people have a relatively
| short peak creative period where most of their valuable output
| comes - eg. Typical recording artists last no more than 10
| years & to be able to achieve their peak, they have to often
| give up on things that promise stable careers for people
| (advanced college degrees, internships and starter roles in the
| 20s) not in the creative industry. So why not let them enjoy
| the benefits of their creativity through royalty in their old
| age if someone streams their song decades later? There are a
| lot of senior artists who would be facing very significant
| hardship if not for their royalties. You can see this much more
| often in athletes who don't have a royalty stream.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Life expectancy was mostly shorter due to infant mortality.
| The average person who made it to 5 years old didn't have an
| expectation to die at 35 at all.
| p1necone wrote:
| What about a compromise where the original works (and
| republishing verbatim) are protected for the life of the
| creator, but derivative works (e.g. writing a new novel with
| the same characters/setting) are only prevented from being
| created for 10-20 years?
| jjcm wrote:
| I'm not fully convinced 20 years is the right answer. Things
| made 20 years ago are still often in pop-culture (The Matrix
| Trilogy, the first 7 seasons of South Park, the first 5 Harry
| Potter books), and these entering the public domain would
| create significant pressure to avoid the names of these series
| becoming legally generic. Managing the rights of these also
| feels like it would create significant stress on platforms
| trying to stem off piracy - is that 5 min clip from the
| Simpsons from seasons 1-15 (legal), or 15-34 (illegal)?
|
| Somewhere between the two feels more significant. Few series
| will run that long, and anything that does enter the public
| domain will be unambiguous due to its look, feel, and sound.
| Something like the original Star Wars (45 years old) is clearly
| older and is distinct from modern media in its look and feel.
| Something like The Lord of the Rings on the otherhand is hard
| to differentiate.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| 20 years is plenty.
|
| Even if the IP is continuing to be used by the original
| creators, they can set the "canon" while competition might
| force them to do a decent job of using the IP in future.
|
| For example, the Matrix. It had definitively entered the
| cultural meme pool after 20 years. If other creators could
| make money telling stories from that universe - whether
| through images, music, video - then the populace at large
| wanted that content. And if film number 4,5,6 are any good
| they make money as well.
| krapp wrote:
| You're only looking at the commercial value of copyright -
| making sure an IP stays as profitable as possible for as long
| as possible. But cultural value is just as, if not more,
| important, as is the premise (lost in modern society) that
| culture should be driven by people rather than manufactured
| by corporations.
|
| Copyright should end soon enough for public adoption of a
| work to still be culturally significant, even if that
| interferes with its market viability.
| dahart wrote:
| > Copyright should end soon enough for public adoption of a
| work to still be culturally significant, even if that
| interferes with its market viability.
|
| Why? That notion is not part of the current reasoning
| behind copyright, and I don't buy that it should be. Feel
| free to make a case for it.
|
| It seems like this idea could backfire dramatically in
| today's fast-paced meme-based globally connected
| environment. It could be used to argue that copyrights
| should end the moment something becomes popular, which
| would undermine both the economic protection for the
| author, as well as the greater social good force to
| incentivize creating new and culturally relevant work. It
| could lead to the opposite of what you say you want, it
| could lead to lower overall cultural value.
| jjcm wrote:
| What I'm looking at is the _clarity_ value of copyright -
| do I know what things are and aren 't copyrighted? I'm
| working on a social media startup right now, and managing
| copyright is tricky as it is. My concern here is that if
| copyright were only 20 years, removing copyrighted content
| would become even harder, making it even more difficult to
| compete with Meta / Google / etc.
| krapp wrote:
| I can't imagine finding out if something is older than 20
| years would be prohibitively expensive - especially when
| those other platforms would have to do the same thing
| were copyright limits to change, meaning infrastructure
| would probably rapidly be developed to enable it. Most
| platforms don't even care, and Google just lets anyone
| claim anything and leaves it to the claimants to sort
| out.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| And then people won't release their works. Why should I
| invest time/energy/my money/long nights not spent having
| fun to create something that I won't own, have control
| over, or profit from? What is my incentive. Sure, some
| people are down for that, but we created copyright laws
| because otherwise we miss out on a ton of valuable stuff to
| society, more valuable than handing over copyright works to
| the public. Society decided this and has benefited hugely
| (as in hands). You want to re-write the rules because 'it
| doesn't work' makes no sense. We have record amounts of IP
| being created, how does it not work? Are there not books
| being written? So it's working. Are there movies being
| made? So it's working. Are there video games being made? So
| it's working. Is there music being made? So it's working.
| Are business processes being improved? So it's working.
| Show HOW it's not working on a level that we risk
| destroying all of that creation and those creators
| livelihoods and incomes. And not 'it's not working, 20
| years only!'. That is not an argument.
| krapp wrote:
| >Why should I invest time/energy/my money/long nights not
| spent having fun to create something that I won't own,
| have control over, or profit from?
|
| You get an exclusive monopoly and profit for twenty
| years, that seems long enough. Expecting the gravy train
| to run for the rest of your life, if not longer, is
| excessive. And I disagree with the premise that all human
| creative effort would cease were that to change.
|
| >You want to re-write the rules because 'it doesn't work'
| makes no sense.
|
| I don't know why you're quoting an argument I didn't
| make, or why you wasted the bulk of your comment
| rebutting it.
| realusername wrote:
| First there's a lot of content which isn't produced
| because of the restrictions, you just don't see it.
| Remixes, different takes into existing content.
|
| Secondly and this is where the current system fails the
| hardest is that you have to preserve culture.
|
| Most of the older niche content is actually preserved by
| piracy right now and would be gone otherwise. There's no
| way to preserve content in the current model, content is
| just created and then thrown away.
| Beldin wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean with "culturally significant
| public adoption".
|
| Whatever the definition, I'd probably argue that the movie
| _The Matrix_ succeeded, even though it 's still under
| copyright. That is: long copyright need not preclude that.
|
| More to the point, I also don't mind long copyrights per
| se. if an individual produced a work that ensures a steady
| income for the rest of their life, I prefer that individual
| enjoying those benefits over having a free-for-all. Eg, in
| my opinion, a one-hit-wonder from the 80s should still
| profit from their one hit if that hit still generated
| profits.
|
| That applies to individuals/small groups though, not for
| media companies. That is, I don't want the folks
| responsible for works that are still in our hearts and
| minds decades later to miss out; don't care much for
| businesses after initial run.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I like the idea of an extension with a hefty tax. After an
| initial period of ~10 years, you have to declare the value of
| the IP each year and pay 10% of that p.a.
|
| Anyone willing to provide your declared value to the public
| coffers can then have it placed in the public domain.
| beezle wrote:
| If I write a best seller at age 25, I hope that I can still
| claim my royalties past age 45. I'd also argue that heirs
| should also have some period of exclusivity as well. Using the
| best seller at age 25 example, were I to die an untimely death
| at age 32 I would again hope that my very young daughter would
| still be able to receive benefit from my creative works. So
| author life + 20 years to the first heir (exclusively) would
| work for me.
|
| In the case of a non-human copyright holder, 50 years seems
| reasonable can broadly comparable to that of the life of a
| human creator.
| wraptile wrote:
| Honestly, everyone should be able to sustain themselves 20
| years later if they can write a best seller once. If you
| can't well then you are either extremely unlucky, have health
| issues or are just plain lazy - we shouldn't base this
| particular law on this.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Who not a guaranteed minimum of 25 years after publication
| (for posthumous works and authors who kick the bucket shortly
| after publication) with the expectation of lifetime of the
| author should they live more than 25 years after publication?
| The heirs of the long-lived authors will have to take the
| personal responsibility to have their own creative ideas
| instead of trading on their father's legacy.
| hnfong wrote:
| Copyright for X years since first publish makes sense.
| Lifetime copyright makes sense too.
|
| But "Lifetime + X years" just rewards those for whatever
| reason has a longer life. There's no reason a work should be
| protected for a longer time because the author lived longer.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I don't understand what "lifetime" means. What if multiple
| people publish it?
|
| How does this affect open source software? A lot of
| software uses restrictive licenses such as AGPL. There
| could be many people that own the copyright or an
| organization. The intent of AGPL software is that it isn't
| used without giving back to the community.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I hope that I can still claim my royalties past age 45
|
| Write more best sellers then.
|
| > So author life + 20 years to the first heir (exclusively)
| would work for me.
|
| Yeah, of course a life+20 year monopoly on bits is great. For
| you. Instead of sitting down and working on more books so
| humanity can benefit, you get to sit down and collect rent
| from your past successes until you die. And then your
| children get to collect that rent for 20 years. You only need
| to strike gold once to be set for life and provide for
| children too.
|
| Why should society subsidize this absurd rent seeking? It
| shouldn't. The social contract was "we'll pretend we can't
| easily copy this stuff so you can make money for a few years
| before it enters the public domain". This life time monopoly
| bullshit is a clear violation of this contract. A society
| whose public domain rights were robbed has zero incentive not
| to use libgen for everything.
| dahart wrote:
| > Write more best sellers then.
|
| Come on, that's flippant response to a valid point. Best-
| sellers are a function of luck. Copyright laws are intended
| to encourage more creative output by offering original work
| some protection. Suggesting that individual authors should
| have less protection and pump out more work and just get
| lucky isn't realistic.
|
| > Why should society subsidize this absurd rent seeking?
|
| Calling it absurd and being outraged and incredulous
| weakens your argument here, when this has been established
| over centuries (millennia arguably) by many many smart
| people.
|
| The rent-seeking, as you call it, provides two functions:
| 1) to allow time for authors to collect returns on their
| creativity and time investment, and 2) to act as a force to
| encourage more creative output from society. The limited
| time monopoly that authors enjoy _is the reason_ that it
| becomes an incentive to create new work. It should be
| attractive to author new things and unattractive to steal
| and publish others' work. If you make the protection period
| too short, it won't work, it won't be an incentive, it will
| become a disincentive and we'll get both artists going
| broke and less creative work and more stealing. (There are
| countries in the world today with weaker copyright laws
| than the US that already exhibit high rates of IP theft and
| low rates of original creative output.) I don't know what
| social contract you're referring to, but since copyright is
| the law, it is the de facto contract today.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Come on, that's flippant response to a valid point.
|
| It's the best I can do when faced with people who feel
| entitled to lifetime and _posthumous_ rent for doing a
| bit of intelectual work. I mean, there 's an artist in
| the comments lower on this page who wants up to
| lifetime+100 years of rent seeking for him, his children
| and his grand children to enjoy.
|
| Keep working if you want to keep making money. That's
| literally the most polite way I can put it.
|
| > when this has been established over centuries
| (millennia arguably) by many many smart people
|
| Well, those smart people didn't exactly count on
| computers existing. It was easy to enforce copyright when
| you needed to be a major industry player owning expensive
| printing presses to infringe copyright at any appreciable
| scale. Now copyright infringement is trivial, people do
| it without even realizing it simply because they can.
| People infringe copyright every single time they download
| a random picture off of some photographer's website or
| something.
|
| The world will never be like it was before and it's time
| to accept that. Copyright is a thing of the past. To put
| that genie back in the bottle, you'll need tyranny the
| likes of which really ought to offend every single user
| posting here on _Hacker_ News. It 's simply not possible
| without destroying everything hackers stand for, the
| computing freedom we cherish. And of course it's exactly
| what the copyright industry is lobbying for.
|
| > The limited time monopoly that authors enjoy _is the
| reason_ that it becomes an incentive to create new work.
|
| I have no idea why you think a lifetime+posthumous
| monopoly can be considered "limited time" in any way.
| You'll be long dead by the time it expires. It is
| functionally infinite.
|
| Limited time is 5 years, 10 at most. Then the cultural
| works I grew up with would be public property by the time
| I'm an adult. That's limited time. You can observe its
| duration being limited. That's tolerable.
|
| > If you make the protection period too short, it won't
| work, it won't be an incentive
|
| And making it too long creates rent seeking and robs us
| of our public domain rights.
|
| > There are countries in the world today with weaker
| copyright laws than the US that already exhibit high
| rates of IP theft and low rates of original creative
| output.
|
| Oh please. The countries you speak of? Many of them don't
| even have universal basic sanitation. They have better
| things to do than police the imaginary property of
| americans.
|
| The US Trade Office being a mouthpiece of US
| "stakeholders" is straight up offensive. US corporations
| using the might of the US government to sanction
| sovereign countries. The only possible reason not to be
| outraged is you're profiting off of this.
|
| > I don't know what social contract you're referring to
|
| The one that expects us to believe we can't just go to
| libgen literally right now and download a copy of your
| book for free.
|
| Always extending copyright durations until it's
| functionally infinite. You're not keeping up your end of
| the public domain bargain. Why should we keep ours?
| dahart wrote:
| > Keep working if you want to keep making money.
|
| FWIW, this is literally what copyright law is saying.
| Instead of copying someone else, seeking rent for
| something you didn't invest in, taking away from someone
| else's investment, go make your own stuff to copy &
| distribute & sell.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Sure, as long as the copyright term is valid. After that,
| the works are in the public domain where there are no
| restrictions to what we can do with our shared culture.
|
| Why do you conveniently forget that the law also talks
| about public domain? The same public domain that
| contained works that artists like Walt Disney drew from
| in order to strike it rich, only to subsequently lobby
| the government to rob us of the same rights he enjoyed
| time and time again?
|
| These functionally infinite copyright terms _rob us of
| our rights_ and turns copyright infringement into civil
| disobedience.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Not everyone can consistently write books that get popular.
| Most authors only have a single book or series get popular
| and the rest of their books do not sell anywhere near as
| well.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That doesn't justify giving them lifetime government
| enforced monopolies. If they want to keep getting paid,
| they should have to keep creating new works. Anything
| else is rent seeking. Having to give them monopolies at
| all is bad enough but the current state of copyright is
| completely unacceptable.
|
| Also, their children are owed exactly nothing by society.
| At most they should be able to inherit still valid
| copyrights with no change to their durations. Heirs
| getting a completely new two decade monopoly just so they
| could "benefit" is absurd and intolerable.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| How long have you lived in your house? Can I have it now?
| oblio wrote:
| Nope, but you can download it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Really? You're gonna compare artificially scarce
| imaginary property with real property on the real world
| like land and physical possessions?
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| > real property on the real world like land and physical
| possessions
|
| That's "real" only because the government enforces it. My
| point was that the comment I replied to was ridiculous.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's "real" because it exists in the real world. It's
| naturally scarce as a result since two bodies cannot
| occupy the same space at the same time. There's only so
| much land available.
|
| It's a completely different matter compared to imaginary
| artificially scarce cultural property which boils down to
| ownership of unique numbers. That's what's ridiculous.
| jennnyy wrote:
| You're free to make an exact copy of it whenever you like
| :)
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| At least where I live, copying a house would not be
| allowed since the specification falls under copyright. So
| no?
| nearbuy wrote:
| Most authors have zero big hits. But authors that get one
| hit are more likely to get future hits.
|
| Most people have to work until retirement age. If you
| happen to get a big hit that earns you enough money to
| retire at age 28, then congratulations, you're one of the
| lucky few. But society doesn't owe you the right to make
| a lifetime worth of money off of a single book. You can
| work until retirement age like everyone else.
|
| Also, long copyright terms only affects retirement age
| for a very small percentage of authors. Most authors
| aren't well known, have no big hits, and each of their
| books gets most of its sales in its first few years.
| These authors have to work their whole life regardless.
| Authors with a really big hit, like J.K. Rowling, have
| enough money to retire after that one book, regardless of
| whether copyright is only 20 years or longer. It only
| makes the difference for those authors who have a small
| hit that won't quite earn enough to retire in 20 years,
| but will earn enough over 40-60 years. That's rare. Books
| usually earn the vast majority of their profits in those
| first 20 years.
| onion2k wrote:
| Things entering the public domain should be considered in the
| context of lowering the cost of access more than the work
| being the basis of new dirivative works. It's _far_ more
| important that millions of people can read or watch something
| without having to pay a fee to the publisher than it is for
| someone to use the work as source material for a new work.
|
| Copyright should be much shorter so that everyone can access
| culturally relevant art and books even if they have very
| little money. Right now the only option for many is piracy
| because the works their peers are seeing work enter the
| public domain until decades after they die.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Imagine creating something in your 20s and you stop earning off
| it in your 40s. I think it should be until the death of the
| creator.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| The concept "death of the creator" is non-trivial in cases
| where the original work is the product of division of labor.
| silisili wrote:
| As was posited in another comment, if we're encouraging
| innovation here, that would help the point. Encourage
| creators to have to create again.
|
| As an aside - I'd imagine for most works, the vast majority
| of earnings would come from the first 20 years. I mean,
| people aren't flocking to the theatre to see Titanic anymore,
| yeah? I'm sure there's some streaming deals and licenses to
| show and whatnot, but nothing like theatre earnings.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Copyright is not the same as patents nor is innovation the
| only or necessarily the most relevant concern.
|
| Authors have rights, especially artists are often not
| immediately discovered, and a lot of large businesses would
| be able to suppress new works for 20 years.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| This shows ignorance on how creators make money. Creators
| don't make money purely through producing new works, per
| se. They create money with a robust set of works whose long
| tail collectively forms enough money for them to live off
| of. This relies on the notion that the intellectual
| property of the creator is theirs for a significantly long
| time. This is because the money made upfront is
| unpredictable [a novel's upfront payment is often just a
| few thousand dollars, but takes over a year to write, edit,
| and produce...]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The "long tail" of works makes practically zero money.
| Most of them simply go out of print and into a copyright-
| induced memory hole. Works that still make money decades
| after their creation are quite exceptional.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| This is only true in the sense that all creative people
| are generally paid exceptionally little for their work,
| and make practically zero money. But of those that do
| make a living, it is through having a robust and
| regularly selling body of work that is still paying money
| years or decades later.
|
| This is also partially why royalties were a huge fight
| against Disney a little while ago, when Disney started to
| refuse to pay royalties for Star Wars and Marvel works
| after acquiring the companies that owned them. Those
| works were still selling years/decades after their
| original creation and those creatives were still owed
| that money.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| So we should subject all works to extreme copyright
| lengths on the mere off-chance that a tiny fraction of
| them might still be making appreciable amounts of money
| decades later? Looks like a total non-starter.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| 20-years is nothing in the terms of the life span
| something. If you look at a lot of the authors they spend
| their lifes writing. Just like you'll spend more than
| 20-years working, so will they. But it seems you want to
| hamstright their earning rights. To me it's absolute
| greed and stealing from the working man.
|
| The entire point of allowing things to go public domain
| is they is no need for copyright protection anylonger.
| But if people are still earning their living off of that
| work then someone would be getting hurt.
|
| And this talk of a total non-starter. You need to explain
| why 20-years is enough. Because it's 100+ just now. So
| you're the one on a total non-starter.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| No, I'm saying 20 years is too short because _it destroys
| the livelihoods of the already-few creatives who can make
| a living off of their work_ , because 20 years is based
| off of a completely ignorant idea of how creatives earn
| livings.
| aczerepinski wrote:
| I very much agree with your general point but still feel 20
| is too short. / Somewhere in the 30-50 range.
| krapp wrote:
| Imagine thinking this is a bad deal in a world where most
| jobs - even most creative jobs - are paycheck to paycheck.
|
| Make a second thing in the 20 years you have ahead of you or
| find other work.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Imagine not understanding what it would really mean.
|
| I write a book.
|
| For 20-years I get paid for my book. After the 20-years
| just the publishers make money from selling my book.
|
| Would it be ok if I came and took stuff you physically made
| 20-years ago and say it's ok - you made it 20-years ago.
| krapp wrote:
| >Would it be ok if I came and took stuff you physically
| made 20-years ago and say it's ok - you made it 20-years
| ago.
|
| Yes. I would be _thrilled_ if anything I made had enough
| cultural value after 20 years that the commons still had
| a use for it. Better that than, say, a publisher deciding
| it no longer has market value and simply never printing
| any more and pulping the rest.
|
| And as far as the publishers getting paid, the publishers
| are _always_ getting paid. You signed away part of your
| rights to them to begin with, and if they couldn 't get
| paid, they wouldn't publish your work to begin with.
| You've already decided they have the right to profit from
| your work, what's under debate is how long anyone else
| has to wait to do the same.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > I would be thrilled if anything I made had enough
| cultural value after 20 years that the commons still had
| a use for it.
|
| You would be thrilled that you made something that good.
| Since something that good is very very rare. You would be
| very upset that I was getting all the value that it
| provides for free just because of how long ago you made
| it.
|
| > And as far as the publishers getting paid, the
| publishers are always getting paid. You signed away part
| of your rights to them to begin with, and if they
| couldn't get paid, they wouldn't publish your work to
| begin with. You've already decided they have the right to
| profit from your work, what's under debate is how long
| anyone else has to wait to do the same. 100% if I take
| anything off you without paying for it, you're going to
| be screaming from the rafters about how unfair it all is.
|
| When you enter into a publishing contract the deal is
| they make money and you make money. Entering into a
| contract where they make money and you make nothing is
| fundamentally not a contract, it is not legal is nearly
| every country. This is why contracts where they sell
| companies with massive debt but have assets such as for
| example Football clubs sell for 1 pound/dollar/euro.
| There must be an exchange. The idea that it's ok for one
| entity to stop paying another entity just because "you
| knew I was going to be making money" is disgusting.
|
| Personally, I think to disagree with the idea it's fair
| someone gets paid for their work is just pure greed. It's
| absolutely disgusting to think it's fair a company gets
| to make money off someone's work without paying them. I
| think people who think along those lines a morally
| bankrupt.
| myrmidon wrote:
| This does not sound convincing to me; I can not imagine ANY
| realistic scenario where artistic activity is only _viable_
| because of profits earned more than 20 years later: Not for
| individual authors /creators and _especially_ not for
| companies.
|
| I think this point of view only appears reasonable because of
| how ridiculously extensive copyright terms are right now...
|
| Imagine companies paying bonuses for work that was done >20
| years earlier: That sounds to me neither reasonable nor
| helpful in any way.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Create more then. Society is not obligated to provide life
| time rent for you and your children just because you made
| something years ago.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Society is not obligated to provide life time rent for
| you
|
| Society should be obligated to pay me for work that I've
| done if they wish to enjoy that work. If I write a book and
| 20-years later you want to read that book, why should you
| get it for free? Why shouldn't demand that you pay me money
| for that book?
|
| Society is not entitled to free shit. Remember Society
| isn't obligated to provide payment, just the people who
| want the creations.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's called our public domain rights. Culture belongs to
| everyone, that's the natural way of things. We willingly
| chose to pretend that we can't copy and distribute your
| book infinitely at negligble cost so you could make some
| money and be rewarded for your efforts. We sure as hell
| didn't do that so you could have functionally infinite
| rent seeking all the way down to your grand children.
|
| Authors and the copyright industry as a whole lobby the
| governments with the intent to systematically rob us of
| our fair use and public domain rights. You're not keeping
| up your public domain side of the bargain. Why should we
| keep up our end? We shouldn't. We won't.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Public domain isn't a side of the bargin. Public domain
| is basically there to stop people making money off other
| people's work.
|
| The entitlement of thinking that public domain is a
| right...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Copyright shouldn't last even one decade. Most of the profits
| of games and movies are made in the first few weeks. Give them
| like five years of protection in order to be exceptionally
| generous and allow for exactly 0 extensions.
|
| That's it. That's how copyright should work in order to be
| _tolerable_. Anything else is pure rent seeking.
| nearbuy wrote:
| A lot of great indie games wouldn't even have been finished
| when their copyright expired if it lasted only 5 years
| (Factorio, Minecraft, Terraria).
|
| And Cave Story wouldn't have made any money. It was released
| for free in 2004 but few people knew about it at the time. It
| wasn't until 2010/2011 when it released on Nintendo and Steam
| (paid version) that it took off.
| elsjaako wrote:
| Minecraft kept being updated during early development, so
| unless you wanted to play a five year old version it would
| still have been under copyright. I agree it probably
| wouldn't have sold for a billion dollars, but they were
| making a lot of money before the sale.
|
| Cave Story I'm less familiar with, but again the Nintento
| and Steam versions would probably be different and have new
| copyright. But I think you're saying the game sold well
| despite a free version being available. Isn't this an
| example that you don't need any copyright to make money off
| a game?
| dahart wrote:
| > Most of the profits of games and movies are made in the
| first few weeks.
|
| This is mostly straw man, it only applies to big-budget AAA
| titles, it doesn't apply to indie games & movies, it doesn't
| apply to artists or musicians, especially most small-time
| artists. It doesn't apply to books or to software or to
| journalism or to educational or corporate content. Your claim
| isn't really even true for Marvel movies or whatever either,
| box office is complicated and movie profits are now based on
| global sales and streaming and ancillary rights and
| merchandising and all kind of things that don't happen in the
| first few weeks.
|
| Copyrights might be too long now, but these laws have been
| around for many centuries, and ala Chesterton's fence, you
| seem to be failing to consider the reasons that copyrights
| appeared in the first place, and the ramifications of
| significantly reducing or abolishing copyrights. The problem
| that led to copyrights is IP theft, unscrupulous people
| publishing work as their own and rent-seeking all the profit
| they can. This will happen at a massive scale if we cut the
| period down to 1 decade or less. You might want to consider
| the possibility that if copyright were shortened to less than
| a decade or abolished today, it might not really hurt Disney
| and other big media corps at all, it might just kill
| independent artists because large corporations can control
| the internet and legally steal your independent creative work
| before you can make money from it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > box office is complicated
|
| It's really not. It either makes more money than it cost or
| it doesn't. If it does, it's considered a success. If not,
| it's a flop. That's how everything I've ever read about the
| copyright industry puts it. I don't really see a need to
| complicate this.
|
| Yeah, corporations make _additional_ money from licensing,
| merchandising and whatnot. Making toys and stuff is fine
| but this licensing bullshit really should end after a few
| years once the work enters the public domain. They 've
| already made their money, they're done and it's time for
| the work enter the public domain.
|
| > The problem that led to copyrights is IP theft,
| unscrupulous people publishing work as their own and rent-
| seeking all the profit they can.
|
| And how is the copyright solution working out for them?
| Days ago I saw someone here posting about how their web
| game was cloned by someone else. Did they sue? No, it's too
| expensive. Meanwhile corporations will kill your YouTube
| videos and steal your advertising money if someone walks by
| on the street playing a song they own.
|
| You might consider the possibility that this trillion
| dollar copyright industry has already coopted this so
| called "system". They turned it against the very same
| people it was designed to protect.
| dahart wrote:
| > It either makes more money than it cost or it doesn't.
|
| You moved your own goal post, you were talking about
| _when_ it makes it's money, not _whether_. Your claim was
| that it reaches that point in a few weeks, which is 1)
| not generally true, and 2) irrelevant to most creative
| works. Copyrights aren't only serving movies, they're
| serving artists and musicians and magazines and websites
| and many other industries too. The amount of time it
| takes for a movie to recoup it's costs has no bearing on
| what copyright terms should be.
|
| > this trillion dollar copyright industry has already
| coopted this so called "system"
|
| There's no question terms are a bit too long and that big
| business is profiting, there's no question whether things
| are messed up. They are, I'm not arguing with you there.
| I'm just not sure that tossing out the baby with the bath
| water and raging against the machine is going to be
| fruitful. Copyrights do protect many independent artists
| somewhat, despite your anecdote.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Copyrights aren't only serving movies, they're serving
| artists and musicians and magazines and websites and many
| other industries too.
|
| Which is why I wrote "give them like five years of
| protection" instead of a few months. That ought to be
| more than enough for most if not all to make their money
| back and then some. Maybe 10 years at the absolute most.
|
| Certainly not this lifetime plus 70 years insanity.
|
| > there's no question whether things are messed up. They
| are, I'm not arguing with you there.
|
| I'm happy you agree.
|
| > I'm just not sure that tossing out the baby with the
| bath water and raging against the machine is going to be
| fruitful.
|
| I'm sorry, it's just so hard for me to watch the
| copyright industry just destroy the computers I love so
| much because they harm their rent seeking. Every year
| it's some new DRM bullshit with new ways to usurp control
| of my computer for their own ends. They have such immense
| lobbying power they made it illegal to break into and
| take control of my own system. It just feels so hopeless.
| I really don't know what else to do at this point.
| dahart wrote:
| > five years [...] That ought to be more than enough for
| most
|
| Why? You have not established this. The only example you
| gave is not valid for most content. Books and art and
| music frequently make the bulk of their return more than
| 5 or 10 years later. Why "most" and not all? Have you
| researched how many people make money on creative output?
| Personally I'm not very convinced by armchair opinions,
| this needs more careful reasoning.
|
| What if draconian copyright is today right now having the
| intended effect of encouraging people to make new work
| and not remix existing content? What you're complaining
| about is the inability to legally copy current work,
| while there is no restriction on making new things (and
| you get legal protection if you do!)
|
| Maybe we should talk about what specific things you want
| to copy that you feel should be legal?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Maybe we should talk about what specific things you
| want to copy that you feel should be legal?
|
| Anything older than 5-10 years should be in the public
| domain. That means music, movies, games, books, literally
| anything copyrighted.
|
| Nintendo should not be selling the same NES Mario game to
| people for the 100th time. They've already made their
| money like a billion times over. Let it go. This is
| honestly shameful.
| alvah wrote:
| Blame the cartoon mouse, it ruins everything it touches.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| > 0 years is more than enough time to profit from creative
| works. Are we as a society really saying that 75+ years is how
| much time people ought to be profiting from creative works? An
| absurd proposition in almost any other industry or pursuit.
|
| How is it any more absurd than a trademark? Why should someone
| be able to write and sell a book about Harry Potter but not
| sell their own Iphone?
| geysersam wrote:
| The purposes of those concepts are totally different.
|
| The purpose of trademarks is customer safety. If it wasn't
| illegal to infringe trademarks, it would be much easier to
| distribute fake products, and companies would have less
| incentive to build their brand on quality.
|
| The motivation for copyright is similar in that it exists to
| incentivize beneficial behavior (creating valuable works).
| But it's different because it also limits the distribution of
| the works. If this "cost" is too high, there is no economical
| sense in having so long copyright.
|
| Trademarks are not intrinsically valuable (to society).
| Limiting their use has no cost.
| ww520 wrote:
| Yes. The copyright duration needs to be shorten.
|
| To grandfather in the existing copyrights, any new ones will
| have one year shortened every year until the 20 year mark
| reached. Then all copyright work have 20 years. That's it.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Interesting effect of this is that it would release a truly
| massive amount of previously copyrighted work in a short
| timespan. Assuming this takes effect next year, some time in
| 2073, all copyrighted material created between this year and
| 2053 will be in the public domain.
| p1necone wrote:
| I want to see what would happen if we abolished all IP law
| except for trademarks. No patents, no copyrights. I personally
| doubt it would actually discourage anyone from producing art or
| innovating in science/technology, but it might have other
| unexpected negative effects.
| spigottoday wrote:
| One negative effect might be that you don't get to hear the
| music, read the book or view the art because you are not the
| wealthy patron or one of their friends. That's the way it
| used to work.
| radiKal07 wrote:
| Bad idea. The small guy with a genius innovation will get
| eaten by the big corporation with 100x more resources.
| zokier wrote:
| Artistic control is major aspect of copyright; as an artist you
| might not want to allow Disney to make hack adaptation of your
| story, or someone use your song in an ad, or gazillion other
| things. Of course such protection can be made into separate
| law, but I think just slashing copyright would be problematic.
| pwython wrote:
| As an artist by trade, you're damn right I want my kids &
| grandkids to profit from my IP (though I'm no Walt Disney),
| whether 20 or 100 years later. Art is different my friend. I'm
| not piecing together code from StackOverflow. Why should my
| heirlooms be sold to the highest bidder outside of my family
| due to copyright legal loopholes?
| oblio wrote:
| The entire concept that you're financial responsible for more
| than you direct descendants is frankly absurd.
|
| Plus on average you're so far removed from about... the 3rd
| generation of descendants that it doesn't really matter.
|
| Nobody should leave their descendants that much wealth that:
|
| 1. they don't need to be productive themselves
|
| 2. that the initial wealth has a higher than 1% chance to
| pass to grandkids
|
| Each generation needs to earn their bread.
|
| Baby boomers kind of didn't and look at what people are
| saying now.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Family heirlooms? Your art is not a heirloom. It's just
| information, transferred from your mind into your medium of
| preference. Information is just bits, nothing but a unique
| number whose discovery you feel entitled to.
|
| You think yourself superior to people who "piece together
| code from StackOverflow"? You're not. They will prove it to
| you with machine learning AI.
| pwython wrote:
| > "Your art is not a heirloom.... you're not entitled
| to..."
|
| What? An heirloom by definition is something passed down in
| a family for generations.
|
| If I created Mickey Mouse for example, why does my future
| offspring have to give away its rights, perhaps to someone
| that may use the character in nefarious ways for profit?
|
| I fail to see the logic of having a free-for-all on an
| artist's work just because they're potentially deceased and
| therefore let someone else receive profits instead of the
| original creator's family?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > What? An heirloom by definition is something passed
| down in a family for generations.
|
| Maybe if you paint a picture on a canvas you could call
| that physical canvas a heirloom. The copyrights
| associated with it have nothing to do with that. Anyone
| can produce a copy.
|
| > If I created Mickey Mouse for example, why does my
| future offspring have to give away its rights
|
| > I fail to see the logic of having a free-for-all on an
| artist's work
|
| It's called our public domain rights. Our culture is ours
| and it belongs to everyone. That's the natural way of
| things. Public domain is the default.
|
| We willingly chose to pretend that we can't copy and
| distribute your art infinitely at negligble cost so you
| could make some money and be rewarded for your efforts.
| We sure as hell didn't do that so you could have
| functionally infinite rent seeking all the way down to
| your grand children.
|
| It's clear that you're not keeping up your public domain
| side of the bargain. Why should we keep up our end? We
| can just stop pretending that your art is artificially
| scarce. Suddenly, it ceases to be. Just like that.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The family can produce their own works if they want
| control.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Perhaps you should have bred smarter heirs who can
| independently produce their own creative bestsellers.
| pwython wrote:
| Funny quip, but my children aren't going into creative
| fields, the topic at hand. And for what it's worth, they're
| both graduating high school early to pursue medicine.
| slyall wrote:
| Well I assume you are happy with a portion of you and your
| work's income for the next 100 years going to your teachers (
| art and other subjects ) without who you could not have
| created the work.
|
| Also any medical people who treated you or your parents.
|
| Teaching and Medicine are skilled jobs that took years to
| learn. It is hardly fair that you and your heirs get to
| profit from some teacher's or Doctor's work without them
| getting a share.
| Animats wrote:
| It was 28 years, with paid extensions, until the Copyright Term
| Extension Act.
|
| We need a lobby pushing to cut it back to 50, which is the
| international standard.
| gfaster wrote:
| The international standard is actually life + 50 years, but
| US and EU along with South Korea, Japan, and many others are
| at life + 70.
|
| see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyr
| ight...
| aczerepinski wrote:
| 50 sounds very reasonable. Not only is it plenty long to
| monetize a work but it may also incentivize aging legends to
| have a second golden age of creativity at the end of their
| career.
|
| One of my favorite all time musicians is still touring (and
| sounding great!) but his entire set list is music he wrote in
| the 60s and 70s. I suspect he still has it in him to write
| amazing new music.
| ozim wrote:
| I have a slightly different take.
|
| Everyone who claims 20 years is more than enough is looking at
| highly successful works.
|
| Imagine that you are not that popular author whose works are
| his life savings. Pennies dripping from works you published are
| your life line that lets you buy food or sustain you in a way.
|
| Without it big publishing companies would just publish stuff
| without paying royalties, because they could can just do that.
| With 75 years it will be also some inheritance for authors
| children - should we also let publishing companies just take
| that?
|
| There is much more not that successful works that still earn
| money and need protection from publishing houses than there is
| "Harry Potters".
| ohbtvz wrote:
| > Imagine that you are not that popular author whose works
| are his life savings. Pennies dripping from works you
| published are your life line that lets you buy food or
| sustain you in a way.
|
| Why should we all pay to make that a viable way of life?
| kevincox wrote:
| I'd much rather solve the problem of starving people
| separately from copyright, maybe some form of Universal Basic
| Income. That way we can handle it for everyone who is in a
| rough situation without requiring them to get lucky enough
| with a moderately successful book.
| snthd wrote:
| You (we?) need to solve attribution bias first.
|
| Art? VR?
|
| Is copyright itself responsible for incentivising a pro-
| intergenerational wealth world view?
| bmitc wrote:
| As much as I dislike big corporations abusing the system,
| like Disney, that's a good point. In particular for novelists
| and artists, it can take decades for discovery and subsequent
| appreciation of their work.
| elsjaako wrote:
| So the business model "write once, get paid for the rest of
| your life" should get built into law? I'm trying to think of
| an analogous situation. Should Architects get commission on
| rent for the rest of their life?
|
| > There is much more not that successful works that still
| earn money and need protection from publishing houses than
| there is "Harry Potters".
|
| There are many more non successful books, I agree. I doubt
| many of them are still available, much less making noteworthy
| money, after 20 years. This is based on my experience trying
| to buy obscure books, I tried to find actual numbers but was
| unsuccessful.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Everyone who claims 20 years is more than enough is looking
| at highly successful works.
|
| I would argue the opposite: that for non-bestsellers, income
| after 20 years is completely negligible. NO one is buying 2nd
| rate fiction 20 years after it was first published, only
| bestsellers will still sell a significant fraction after that
| long.
|
| I also don't see how potential income 20 years later could
| ever effectively motivate or enable a person...
| another-dave wrote:
| Could always leave the timescales as-is, but have a break
| clause -- if your work generates more than $xM in sales it's
| now out of copyright.
|
| Would protect the non-Star Wars/Harry Potters, but also let
| us recognise that SW/HP/LotR _have_ become part of our shared
| culture and it does wider society little benefit to give one
| company a monopoly on them
| zcombynator wrote:
| think about Mickey Mouse. It's STILL in active use by Disney. I
| feel like it SHOULD still be protected, even though its' been
| 75 years.
|
| What about the Coca Cola Brand and Logo? It's also more than
| 100 years old. Can I start a 1:1 copycat, including logo and
| name?
|
| It should probably be related to ACTIVE USAGE, not first
| mention.
| samarthr1 wrote:
| Coca Cola's brand and logo are trademarks, not copyrights
| btw.
| andirk wrote:
| Seeing as the USA's ultra affluent crust is grossly crowded
| with generational wealth, I don't think they'd like the idea of
| removing any of their profits, however long ago and however
| void of any of their own toil, regardless of the overall good
| it would do.
| robocat wrote:
| > is grossly crowded with generational wealth
|
| The top ten wealthiest people in the US did not inherit their
| wealth - and power law distribution of wealth really matters.
|
| That said, I agree there is a problem with intergenerational
| wealth, although possibly more through family political power
| and influence than their raw financial power.
| wraptile wrote:
| > The top ten wealthiest people in the US did not inherit
| their wealth
|
| Not sure what you mean by that. Just going through the
| wikipedia articles they certainly seem to have inherited
| some part of their fortune. Using money to make more money
| isn't particularly complicated. You also inherit the social
| standing which makes successful investments much easier.
| autoexec wrote:
| > at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the
| ability to generate profit
|
| That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point. The
| point was to promote the creation of new creative works. That's
| it. The way to do that was making sure that creators had a
| limited time where they could exclusively profit from their
| efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was never
| what copyright was all about.
|
| Today, creating/protecting profit is what it's been abused to
| accomplish though, often hurting the creation of new works, and
| most often not even for the benefit of the actual creators.
|
| 20 years was more than enough time for people to profit from
| their works when worldwide distribution was basically
| impossible, advertising was a joke compared to what we have
| today, and it was a massive investment to publish at all. Now
| you can publish for close to nothing and advertise and
| distribute worldwide in seconds. 20 years is at least 2x too
| long. 10 years seems far more reasonable to me.
|
| If we're reworking the system we also need to make sure that
| DRM doesn't prevent works from being useful after they've been
| returned to the public domain. That's a consideration they
| didn't have to worry about when copyright protections were
| being drafted, but it's increasingly going to lock us out of
| our own culture.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Is it possible that the extremely long copyright time still
| succeeds in promoting the creation of new works? For example,
| under copyright, you can't take Mickey Mouse, throw
| sunglasses on him, then re-release all of the existing work,
| because it's not protected by the fair use clause. However,
| if you were to create something demonstrably different to the
| point where it does qualify for fair use, then suddenly
| you've created new media that you have the copyright for and
| can do whatever you wish (including sell it; whether or not
| it's used for commercial purposes is only a factor in fair
| use determinations, it doesn't instantly disqualify it for
| fair use).
|
| The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the
| ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it in
| a way that makes it take on a new meaning.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > For example, under copyright, you can't take Mickey
| Mouse, throw sunglasses on him, then re-release all of the
| existing work
|
| You mean, exactly what Disney did? Create movies based on
| existing works (Brothers Grimm etc.) while ignoring
| copyright (Bambi) or against the direct wishes of the
| original author (can't remember which one right now)
| Tanoc wrote:
| Most culture throughout human history has been iterative
| instead of anthologic. Often times the stories, myths,
| legends, and folk tales we have are because multiple people
| added to the story after the original author ended it to
| add a piece that relates to their own time or
| understanding. They didn't just say, throw sunglasses and a
| banana hammock on Beowulf and now he's Bae-o-wulf, original
| character, do no steal. The story of King Arthur for
| example has three different origins between the changeling
| child, the sword in the stone, and the commoner to king
| stories because for the longest time King Arthur's Court
| started in medias res. Then there's the fact that Sir
| Lancelot was a later addition to the mythology of King
| Arthur, appearing almost six hundred years after the
| popular stories first appeared in public circulation as a
| cultural response to the rise of the idea of courtly love.
| And the story of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight itself was
| a later addition as well to epitomize the growing ideal of
| chivalry. Even Alfred Lord Tennyson was adding to the story
| over twelve hundred years after it first appeared in
| response to gothic literature and it's focus on the beauty
| in decay and nihilism. To put it one way, Lancelot, Gawain,
| and Elaine were essentially fanfiction to the existing
| mythologies that became canon.
|
| And the truest form of that iterative culture that still
| exists and continues building the mythologies or characters
| of these stories is fan fiction. People adding onto the
| characters and history of the fictional world, finding what
| works and discarding what doesn't, and slowly weaving
| together a full and rich story. This is in stark contrast
| to anthology style works such as traditional superhero
| comic books, where the creators work under direction and
| the rules of the world and the personas of it's characters
| are often not allowed to change. Unlike Guinevere who is
| eventually swayed from Arthur into courtly love with
| Lancelot, Lois Lane must always love Superman for example.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The only thing the public domain seems to benefit is the
| ability to redistribute the work without iterating upon it
| in a way that makes it take on a new meaning.
|
| No... fair use doesn't work like you think it does and it's
| a only a defense that has to be tested in court where
| you'll be up against the legal team of a billion dollar
| media industry that has connections and ties at the highest
| levels of the justice system
|
| Once something is in the public domain you can use it to
| create new works that are completely transformative without
| risking losing everything in a lawsuit.
|
| Vast amounts of new and truly innovative creative works are
| prevented from being created because of our existing
| copyright laws. Music is the worst at this where just a
| couple of notes being too similar to some other song can
| cause you lose everything. People have lost fortunes just
| for writing a new and unique song that just happened to be
| in the same _genre_ as another song.
| (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you-
| copy-a...)
|
| Look at what one artist had to do (and pay) to get her film
| seen by the public at all:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sita-sings-the-copyright-
| bl...
|
| If those songs had been fully in the public domain, her
| amazing and transformative film (which I'd recommend to
| anyone) would have had no issues at all. How many artists
| aren't willing or able to go through what she did and just
| give up? How many musicians are writing songs that will
| never see the light of day because of fear that some song
| they've never heard before will be used to take everything
| from them? They can sign over all their rights to the RIAA
| and hope that's enough to protect them, or they risk being
| sued.
|
| The public domain is critical for artists to be free to
| create entirely new works and build on old ones to create
| new works as well.
| kadoban wrote:
| > For example, under copyright, you can't take Mickey
| Mouse, throw sunglasses on him, then re-release all of the
| existing work, because it's not protected by the fair use
| clause. However, if you were to create something
| demonstrably different to the point where it does qualify
| for fair use, then suddenly you've created new media that
| you have the copyright for and can do whatever you wish
| (including sell it; whether or not it's used for commercial
| purposes is only a factor in fair use determinations, it
| doesn't instantly disqualify it for fair use).
|
| Your understanding of fair use seems quite flawed.
|
| Tell me, have you _ever_ seen Mickey Mouse used for
| _anything_ even remotely interesting that wasn't made by
| Disney?
|
| One of the most well-known characters of all time, if fair
| use wasn't too restrictive, there'd be some derivative
| works out there, right?
|
| The reason you don't is because what's allowed by fair use
| is _very_ limited and ambiguous (ie dependent on how much
| money you want to spend on a lawyer to defend yourself).
|
| You can do reviews of shows/movies, you could probably do a
| really obvious parody, you could report on some Mickey
| Mouse news, and that's essentially it. Anything else will
| get you sued _hard_ and you will not win.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > Tell me, have you _ever_ seen Mickey Mouse used for
| _anything_ even remotely interesting that wasn't made by
| Disney?
|
| No problem, just find and buy a copy of The Mickey Mouse
| Make-It Book [1]. It contains step-by-step instructions
| for making Mickey Mouse puppets and then encourages you
| to have fun with your creations. Straight from Walt
| Disney Production's mouth.
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12114271-the-
| mickey-mous...
| kadoban wrote:
| > Straight from Walt Disney Production's mouth.
|
| Kind of the point? It's published by Disney.
|
| Sure you can make all kinds of stuff for yourself, you
| just can't share them in any real way.
| [deleted]
| btdmaster wrote:
| If fair use meant the same thing as new work, then yes
| certainly.
|
| For now: https://mimiandeunice.com/2011/07/29/fair-use/
| smeagull wrote:
| > The point was to promote the creation of new creative
| works.
|
| I thought the point was to ensure streamers and video
| creators couldn't film the real world where songs get
| performed all the time.
| kqr wrote:
| Are you confusing copyright with patent rights?
|
| Patents have a dual purpose:
|
| - they force exclusive access to a technology for a while,
| promoting innovation and profit; but!
|
| - they also force you to publish all the internals of how
| that technology works, promoting production of cheaper copies
| after the exclusive period has passed.
|
| I'm not aware of copyright having any such function.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Oh yes, I agree that even 20 is probably too long in our
| current day and age with how easy it is to diseeminate work.
| dahart wrote:
| > The point was to promote the creation of new creative
| works.
|
| What are you referring to exactly, US copyright law or
| earlier laws from other countries? US Copyright law from the
| beginning (1790) was written in part to preserve the economic
| property rights of authors and publishers. Part of the point
| always has been protection of profit. [1] [2]. Initially it
| only applied to books, not to art. You can't really separate
| the granting of a limited-time monopoly over a work from the
| promotion of new creative works, they go hand in hand, to say
| economic protection was never the point is not accurate.
|
| 'In 1783 several authors' petitions persuaded the Continental
| Congress "that nothing is more properly a man's own than the
| fruit of his study, and that the protection and security of
| literary property would greatly tend to encourage genius and
| to promote useful discoveries."' [2]
|
| The earlier British Statue of Anne says similarly: "Whereas
| Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late
| frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and
| Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and
| Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of
| the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to
| their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them
| and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices
| for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to
| Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty,
| that it may be Enacted" [3]
|
| Note that both quotes reference economic protection as the
| first reason, and promotion of creativity second.
|
| [1] https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/timeline_18th_century.
| htm...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Text
| autoexec wrote:
| I was talking about US law, where the purpose was 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." but even that very first copyright law
| written saw the need for the "Encouragement of Learned Men
| to Compose and Write useful Books"
| dahart wrote:
| The US law, and the British law it was modeled after,
| were both trying to solve an _existing_ problem of theft.
| You're right that the rationale did include the notion
| that granting protection would be good for society and
| encourage creation of new work (because the alternative
| they witnessed in practice was to make money copying
| someone else). You're right that this was part of the
| purpose, but the stated purpose from the very beginning
| was in fact to protect authors' and publishers' rights to
| make money. Not only was that always the primary point,
| but it is also the very mechanism by which they promoted
| new work: the only incentive to create new work is that
| you have legal protection from copiers for some time so
| you can make money. This is why these two reasons are
| inseparable, right?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US law, and the British law it was modeled after,
| were both trying to solve an existing problem of theft.
|
| No, it wasn't. Creation of novel property rights is never
| to solve a problem of theft, because theft only exists in
| the context of existing property rights.
|
| > but the stated purpose from the very beginning was in
| fact to protect authors' and publishers' rights to make
| money
|
| The original British copyright law did not apply to
| _authors_ at all, but to printers only. As D f good _z_ w
| dahart wrote:
| > theft only exists in the context of existing property
| rights
|
| Of course the law didn't exist before it was written, but
| copying others' content was viewed as stealing, which is
| why there was a push to turn it into real, legal theft.
| Apologies for using shorthand. What words would you have
| chosen? Maybe you can make my point better than I can,
| because the law was in fact written in response to an
| actual problem people had of being able to recoup their
| investments.
|
| I don't agree that 'theft' requires existing legal
| property rights to exist, that is not the definition of
| the word, so your claim is inaccurate. Theft is the act
| of stealing, which is taking something without
| permission. It can be one-sided from the perspective of
| the person who was taken from, and still be theft.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Of course the law didn't exist before it was written,
| but copying others' content was viewed as stealing,
|
| But the first copyright laws in Britain gave no rights
| _at all_ to creators.
|
| They weren't about moral rights founded in creation of
| works, the basis of rights was the capital investment of
| setting up to print the work.
| dahart wrote:
| Right yes, to my broad point here that the law's whole
| point was to protect profits, and I agree originally it
| was publisher's profits not author's.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| From that history of copyright page:
|
| > The origin of copyright law in most European countries
| lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate
| and control the output of printers
|
| I think it's far more likely that they're about making sure
| that the wrong sort of bible, or the wrong sort of
| pamphlet, doesn't get printed. Whatever "for the economy"
| or "for the creators" verbiage is in there was added after
| the fact by marketing.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| I don't think anyone has ever asserted copyright on the
| bible. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about? As
| for pamphlets, copyright can never prevent you from
| printing something that you created.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'll have to brush up on my history of the protestant
| reformation, but I'm under the impression that for a very
| long time the church had a monopoly on people with enough
| dedication and support to sit around copying books by
| hand. There was no need for copyright law because it was
| totally legal to kick the rabble rousers out of the
| monastery for any old reason.
|
| In this way, the church had been asserting copyright on
| the Bible for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the
| invention of the printing press that they needed a law
| for it.
|
| It's easy to find legal text today that says it's for one
| thing but if you're in the know it's clear that its
| purpose--the side effect without which it wouldn't exist
| --is unstated or hidden. I'm skeptical that our picture
| of the 1700's is good enough to solve the same puzzle
| that far in retrospect, but my hypothesis is that if it
| was, we'd find things were a bit less about protecting
| authors economically than a surface-level read would lead
| us to believe.
| akiselev wrote:
| Actually, it's almost exactly the other way around. The
| Gutenberg Bible may be famous as the first thing printed
| but publishing exploded in the second half of the
| fifteenth century across all genres.
|
| The competition was intense and with no copyright law, it
| was a race to find and publish as many works as possible
| before they were picked up by competitors and copies
| flooded the market. In order to keep the presses
| profitable the printers published tons of material that
| went against Church doctrine. Anti-Church material was
| often the most profitable because the printers didn't
| have to pay the authors for the content. The printers
| were driven by economics and the Church couldn't reign
| them in.
|
| The first copyright laws established regional monopolies
| so that printers could be controlled for the benefit of
| God and country but governments did it by freeing them
| from the laissez fare competition that dominated the
| early printing industry. By giving printers exclusive
| rights and banning foreign copies, governments created
| stable revenue streams for the printers so that they had
| the option of saying "no" to new authors. The Church
| exploited "for the economy" rhetoric from the beginning.
| retrac wrote:
| There are some interesting vestiges of the origin of
| copyright, still floating around in contemporary legal
| systems.
|
| In the UK, and in other countries patterned after the UK
| constitution, works of the government are technically
| under royal prerogative. It's usually called "Crown
| copyright" but it isn't regulated by normal copyright
| law. Traditionally, the monarch reserved the right to
| ensure that laws were duplicated exactly, etc. It's the
| inherent right of the monarch, and that right has never
| actually been explicitly curtailed by law. For example,
| Canada's Copyright Act has a clause, asserting the Act
| does not curtail any rights or privileges of the Crown.
|
| It's probably the purest form of "intellectual property"
| that exists. Anything the Crown creates is under Crown
| copyright. The copyright term is forever. There is no
| fair use or fair dealing with Crown copyrighted works.
| [1] The justification for the copyright is not derived
| from statute but, within the legal conceit we're working
| with here anyway, rather literally from God and
| traditional since time immemorial.
|
| Speaking of which, The King James Bible is still under
| Crown copyright in the United Kingdom. James I paid for
| it and his heirs insist on their due. The Crown issued
| letters patent to several printers, those letters were
| acquired and now Cambridge University Press has the right
| to print the KJV Bible in England. It's one of the very
| few letters patent to somehow slip through the 19th and
| 20th century overhauls; nearly all have been abolished by
| acts of legislation.
|
| Letters patent are the granting of an office or title or
| right or property by the state to an individual. The
| granting of such rights was historically, also another
| royal prerogative. Scope-limited monopolies were very
| common. A monopoly on farming salt on a particular beach.
| A monopoly on collecting taxes in a particular county. A
| monopoly on dying wool a certain colour in a particular
| town. Such letters were considered a form of property by
| the courts, and they could in some cases be traded.
|
| This is, as I understand it, largely the
| intellectual/legal origin of modern copyright in the
| Anglo-American tradition. It was, at first, not focused
| on the work, the text, so much as the economic right of a
| printer, to have a monopoly on a specific work, and to
| not have that right infringed with unseemly competition.
| As more and more letters patent regarding printing were
| issued, it eventually became formalized and then
| regulated by statute, taking it out of the Crown's
| arbitrary hands. At the same time (I think we're at about
| 1750 AD now?) the proliferation of printing started
| reducing the economic significance of the book itself vs.
| the contents of the book, and we started to think more
| about the author than the printer.
|
| [1] Of course, practically speaking, in modern times, the
| Crown has issued various directives over the years,
| culminating in a whole department to manage Crown
| copyrighted works, and it's policy that verbatim
| duplication and etc. of laws are just fine. But very
| technically, that privilege could be rescinded at any
| time by royal decree, though of course that won't
| actually happen.
| etrevino wrote:
| The Wiki article is something I wish I had time to edit.
| Yes, there was an attempt to ensure that the right sort
| of thing be printed, but it was also about making sure
| that no one else could print certain documents. You'd
| license a bible text to be able to regulate that it's the
| correct type of bible being printed, yes. You'd then see
| who else was printing bibles and shut them down. Okay,
| that's all correct, but there's more to its foundation
| than that. For example, in the UK, one individual had the
| sole right to profit off the last testaments of people to
| be hanged in Newgate Prison. In the 17th C, Parliament
| gave this power was to a preacher who in turn designated
| a specific printer. That power is what allowed the
| preacher (and the printer) to profit: no one could
| (legally) copy it. Regulating printers was the only way
| to ensure profit for an author _and_ it was an attempt to
| guarantee conformity.
| brigandish wrote:
| > The point was to promote the creation of new creative works
|
| for profit, profit of money and profit of learning. The first
| copyright law in the world, the Statute of Anne[1]
| specifically mentions money in the preamble:
|
| > Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of
| late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting,
| and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and
| Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of
| the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to
| their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them
| and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices
| for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to
| Compose and Write useful Books;
|
| (As an aside, I'm so glad English moved away from German or
| we'd still be using capital letters everywhere!)
|
| Authors of the time were arguing against censorship,
| monopolies formed by powerful printers, _and_ to make money
| they felt they were owed. As Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson
| Crusoe, is quoted as saying in that article:
|
| > One Man Studies Seven Year, to bring a finish'd Peice into
| the World, and a Pyrate Printer, Reprints his Copy
| immediately, and Sells it for a quarter of the Price ...
| these things call for an Act of Parliament
|
| Let's not misrepresent history to fit our own dispositions
| today.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| > The point was to promote the creation of new creative
| works.
|
| I'm pretty sure it prevents new works more than it creates
| them these days.
|
| It needs a rewrite:
|
| - you only get copyright protection if publish an address to
| send payments to
|
| - enforcement of copyright means compelling payment to that
| address, not removing the infringing work
| mortehu wrote:
| Are you comfortable with invalidating copyleft licenses
| like GPL?
| [deleted]
| Taywee wrote:
| I'm a total GPL fanboy, but that would not only
| invalidate GPL, but make it legal to disassemble, modify,
| and redistribute all proprietary software less than 10
| years old.
|
| I don't think it's a great thing, or a horrible one; the
| positive and negative ramifications are difficult to even
| estimate. The software world that we live in would be
| vastly different in very many ways.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I imagine they'd have to be reimplemented under the new
| legal framework. Attaching addresses to IP isn't so
| different from attaching predicates like "must be open".
|
| It just shouldn't converge on takedowns is all I'm
| saying. No legal paths to censorship.
| XorNot wrote:
| Open source licenses exist to try and prevent attack on
| open-source by groups privatizing otherwise freely
| distributed code. It's an arms race. In a world where
| copyright's expire on reasonable timeframes, the value of
| copyleft licenses is vastly reduced since useful code
| becomes freely available within a reasonable timeframe.
| mortehu wrote:
| Why do you say the code would become freely available?
| With no copyleft, you could fork any project and keep the
| code closed forever.
| chii wrote:
| but the copyright to that code would expire in another X
| number of years.
|
| So it's equivalent to having GPL on that private fork,
| but on the timeframe of copyright expiry.
| Scarblac wrote:
| No. The GPL says you must provide the source when asked.
| In the new situation they would just never distribute it.
| Siira wrote:
| GPL found a way to utilize an evil law to do some good.
| What we need is to first scrap the evil law, then pass a
| FOSS protection act. (Besides, a 10 year copyrighted is
| so long that GPL would still be mostly enforced.)
| Supermancho wrote:
| The GPL was a best effort, given the state of US
| copyright. There is no dissenting Open Source group who
| lobbies for the existing state of copyright because they
| consider the GPL as more important. Another version of
| the license can be written.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| And who determines that amount to pay?
|
| Surely all use cases can't be the same amount. If I write a
| song and Disney uses it in a Marvel movie presumably, I
| should be paid more than if some local high school kid uses
| a 10 second sample of the song during their garage bands
| production.
|
| What if a bunch of neo-nazis want to use my song in their
| propaganda video? Shouldn't I be able to stop them? Their
| use would be a detriment to not only the commercial value
| of my work but potentially to myself as well.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Well if Disney made the same amount of money as the high
| school kid, and relied on your song to the same degree,
| then presumably they would pay the same.
|
| As for what percentage of the derived-work revenue needs
| to be paid to you, let the deriver pick something that
| they think is fair (it just can't be $0). It'll be part
| of the metadata on that work so everybody can see how
| much of what they're paying is being passed along.
|
| Then we create a culture of amplifying works that are
| fair to their dependencies. As for those that are doing
| the bare minimum, we name and shame (and sabotage?).
|
| If it turns out that attributions coverage on 0.00000001%
| then we can talk about codifying the amounts, but I
| really think that if we just mandate the transparency,
| culture will handle the rest.
| chii wrote:
| > Surely all use cases can't be the same amount.
|
| but why not?
|
| If copyright licenses on works could be had for cheap,
| everyone benefits. Sure, disney benefits a lot, since
| they can make use of the work more efficienty in large
| productions, but the result of _their_ work could also be
| had for cheap (such as someone else taking the disney
| movie and remixing it for low cost).
|
| > Shouldn't I be able to stop them?
|
| no you shouldn't, if said neo-nazi propaganda wasn't
| illegal to begin with.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I've always thought the patent system should work the same
| way. If you don't produce a product from or reasonably
| license the invention, you lose the right to hold the
| patent.
| ma2rten wrote:
| This is news to me. Do you have more information about
| that?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Information about the fact that more original work is
| prevented by copyright than protected by it? Only
| anecdotes about people I know who gave up on their dreams
| because they can't afford a lawyer to fight for their
| right to do art.
|
| Information about the bullet points? That's my first
| draft of an alternative formulation.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I was surprised to see _WKRP in Cincinnati_ in the TV
| listings. It was my understanding that all the old music in
| those shows made them impossible to broadcast anymore,
| because (1) the copyright owners wanted too much money, and
| (2) for some of the music, it was impossible to find the
| owners.
|
| Maybe they got past that, at least for some of the
| episodes.
| fmdragon wrote:
| Where do you see WKRP listed?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't have an online guide handy, but I do have a
| digital antenna (something I've written about before).
| (If you have line-of-sight with the tower, you can still
| watch major sports events for free. It's not dead.)
|
| However, I think I saw WKRP in the "broadcast TV" popup
| on my TV. You can tell that they're going out on the web
| to get it, because at first it says "no information
| available" and then it populates the channels. It was on
| Channel 1 in the Bay Area, which shows almost all ancient
| shows.
| fmdragon wrote:
| You actually meant your local TV listings! I thought
| there was a TV listings section in the article, lol. I
| was confused as to how WKRP could've been in the public
| domain.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > your local TV listings
|
| yes. Those still exist; still free.
| autoexec wrote:
| Maybe they replaced the music? That's what they did in
| order to be able to release the series Daria on DVD.
| Included in the package was an apology letter explaining
| why they had to replace all the music.
|
| They might have also secured some of the rights and just
| dropped the episodes containing songs where they
| couldn't. That's what Disney did when they put The Muppet
| Show on Disney+. A few episodes are missing because even
| with Disney's money they couldn't get the rights to all
| the songs.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I haven't watched it yet. I doubt they replaced the
| music, since it IS about a radio station.
| fmdragon wrote:
| That's exactly what they did for the first DVD releases
| in the mid-2000s. Made it a bit jarring for some of the
| iconic scenes.
|
| I believe the Shout Factory releases a few years back
| restored the majority of it though.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Not just that, you only get protection (in a specific
| country) if you make it reasonably simply available in said
| country.
|
| I live in the balkans (but still.. part of EU, we have
| credit cards, internet, everything), and many many media
| (movies, music,...) are unavailable to buy here... not on
| netflix, no hulu here, not on any other streaming provider,
| not released on dvd, not available to buy any other way
| here...
|
| ...but somehow, if I download that movie/episode from a
| torrent site, i'm somehow causing them financial loss with
| my download...
| Taywee wrote:
| Even in America, I've had to pirate TV shows from England
| because they simply weren't available here, won't air
| here, and aren't sold anywhere, even in England.
|
| I can't watch Big Fat Quiz of Everything legally at all.
| My options are to break copyright to pirate it after it
| airs, not watch it at all, or to move to England. I
| choose the first. I'd gladly pay for it if given the
| option, but I have no moral qualms with illegally
| downloading something I can't even pay for in the first
| place.
| geysersam wrote:
| This illustrates the sheer inefficiency of the market in
| this case.
|
| While distribution is basically free (pirates do it at a
| very low cost), having a payment system set up for these
| "unusual" purchases costs more than the revenue is worth.
| XorNot wrote:
| The best part is that the second hand market satisfies
| the legal criteria of ownership, but doesn't reward the
| creators in the slightest.
|
| I've bought a number of media second hand to make sure I
| own them, and it's remarkable how there just is no way to
| pay any original producer for things in a lot of cases. I
| can download a movie easily, but there's no way for me to
| pay anyone for having done so - meanwhile if I buy a
| physical copy of that movie from someone else...the
| creator doesn't make any money from me at all, but it's
| all completely legal.
| archi42 wrote:
| This is not entirely true: Selling on the second hand
| market reduces the cost for the original buyer, allowing
| them to buy more media than they would/could without the
| second hand market.
|
| That's assuming second hand prices below the original
| price. Inflated prices for rare works (which could be
| easily republished as digital media by the creators) are
| a different story.
| gmd63 wrote:
| With stupidly long copyright protection I can see this
| being justified by "protecting those profits we're trying
| to make 2 decades from now"
| gus_massa wrote:
| The big guys (Disney, big discography labels, ...) can
| afford to open a branch in every country. The small guys
| that made an independent film are screwed.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| You don't need a branch in every country, they just need
| to remove the: if($country eq
| "Slovenia") { print "This video is not available in your
| country!\n"; exit; }
|
| from the current store.
| hnfong wrote:
| ... and immediately get bankrupt by copyright litigation.
|
| A lot of distribution of media is set in the previous
| century, where distribution rights are negotiated on a
| per country basis.
|
| It sucks, and I wholly support copyright reform to
| address these issues, but making Disney etc into Pirate
| Bay isn't the way to solve the problem.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This whole thread is about copyright reform, and what
| should be done to make it better... and that includes
| this.
| asdfaoeu wrote:
| He was talking about independent studios though.
| hnfong wrote:
| Ah, you're right.
| eitland wrote:
| There is tax rules to comply with too, but I am sure a
| third party will be happy to make a solution.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point.
| The point was to promote the creation of new creative works.
|
| I wonder - if copyright expiration had been enshrined in
| something harder to extend like a US Constitution amendment,
| would we be better off? Or would the powerful
| media/entertainment forces try to convince the electorate
| that early expirations were problematic? Would we have a
| flourishing public domain or would HUAC have flipped on its
| head - looking instead for the enemies of the entertainment
| industry? Commies who don't want Mickey Mouse to make money.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point.
| The point was to promote the creation of new creative works.
| That's it. The way to do that was making sure that creators
| had a limited time where they could exclusively profit from
| their efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was
| never what copyright was all about.
|
| Are there any studies showing that copyright actually does
| achieve its goal of promoting the creation of art? Can we
| show a causal link between copyright and art creation? Can we
| show a proportional effect where longer copyright terms lead
| to more/better art creation? I suppose it would be rather
| difficult. You'd have to find a control group that's
| otherwise just like the USA (or your comparable country) but
| without copyright.
|
| Is copyright really the driving force, without which we
| wouldn't have creative output? I have my doubts. People were
| drawing on cave walls and parchments long before copyright.
| Would people simply not create art if copyright didn't exist?
| And if so, would we really miss that particular art?
| autoexec wrote:
| I do agree that artists are going to create no matter what.
| I do suspect we'd have less works if nobody could make a
| living doing it though. Especially things like film and
| animation which historically required crazy amounts of
| money up front. People were willing to fund those efforts
| because they could expect a likely return on their
| investment which without copyright protections wouldn't be
| possible.
|
| We've gone way overboard, but I do think some level of
| protection for creators is for the best even now when it's
| easier and less expensive than ever to create.
| fancybouncy wrote:
| > artists are going to create no matter what.
|
| i don't agree. _fine artists_ will, but the bulk of
| consumed art is commercial art, it 's a job, and most
| people only work if they get money for it.
|
| I like the soviet model of commissioning people to write
| e.g. math and science books: the author got a stipend
| like any office worker, and copyright belonged to the
| commissioner (the country).
| autoexec wrote:
| > i don't agree. fine artists will, but the bulk of
| consumed art is commercial art
|
| The bulk of art consumed is advertising. The bulk of art
| created however is not commercial art. It's people who
| paint, write music, write stories, etc. as a hobby. Even
| if it's just writing bad fan fic or shitty furry drawings
| people are constantly creating and publishing in their
| spare time. If all the commerial art went away, we'd seek
| out more of their stuff.
|
| In the end there are very few artists who would never
| create anything again unless they were getting paid to do
| it. Money isn't really the reason artists create. They
| tend to feel a need to express themselves and have a love
| for the work they do. It's why artists are so easily
| exploited.
|
| The works we prefer to consume tend to cost a lot more to
| produce and those are the things we'd risk losing if
| there copyright didn't exist at all. It'd be a sad state
| of affairs if all we had to read was fan fic. Even then
| though, a lot of people create impressive and popular
| works and release them for free.
| nearbuy wrote:
| As you point out, I'm not sure how you would do that study
| without having two otherwise identical countries that
| differ only by copywrite law.
|
| Still, we can make some guesses what would happen without
| copyright.
|
| eBook readers could offer all books for free to improve
| sales of their reader. Amazon already gives books that are
| in the public domain for free on Kindle. If Amazon doesn't
| expand this to all books, some competitor will. Project
| Gutenberg would also expand their collection to include all
| books.
|
| Physical books wouldn't be free, but there would be no
| guarantee the author would get any money from them. There'd
| be zero incentive for printing houses to pay authors.
| They'd be allowed to sell the books without the author's
| permission and keep all the profits.
|
| Authors' best option may be to ask for donations or start a
| Patreon. This works for some people, but in general, you
| make orders of magnitude less money off donations than
| actually selling something.
|
| Would less money going to authors stop people from writing
| books? Probably somewhat. The most popular authors will
| still have ways to make money. And there'd still be people
| who write books for free, as a hobby. But it would reduce
| the number of professional authors.
| zqfuz wrote:
| "making sure that creators had a limited time where they
| could exclusively profit" sounds like "protection of profit"
| to me.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| Right, but it's the means not the end.
| autoexec wrote:
| That was a means to an end, not the end itself. That's the
| point. The goal of copyright has always been very clear. It
| was for encouraging the creation of new works.
| godelski wrote:
| Done through the means of ensuring that the original
| artist may profit off of their own hard work and no one
| else can steal the hard work and profit off it. The abuse
| you're talking about is the extension of the same
| mechanism that allows rights owners to profit for much
| longer periods of time, which actually discourages the
| creation of new works. This can all be true because there
| aren't binary solutions and things need nuance.
| int_19h wrote:
| Original copyright terms didn't last for a lifetime,
| either.
| Oxidation wrote:
| It's more like 2 lifetimes now: it's usually 70 years
| after the death of the author, which can be substantially
| longer than 95 years.
| realusername wrote:
| Most of the copyrights nowadays are held by large
| conglomerates anyways and not artists, sure that's not a
| nuanced point of view but copyright isn't nuanced either
| godelski wrote:
| The nuance is with respect to the above conversation. I
| don't think anyone here is disagreeing that the system is
| being abused and that the copyright holders are abused by
| large conglomerates. I don't think anyone is arguing
| against the points you're bringing up.
| autoexec wrote:
| Copyright is abused in may ways that go far beyond
| perpetually extended copyright protections. The DMCA has
| enabled copyright to be used as a weapon to silence
| criticism. Companies have created a revenue stream out of
| sending DMCA notices demanding that people (innocent or
| otherwise) pay settlements now or else face long and
| expensive court battles. Creators are threatened with
| lawsuits or dragged through the courts on highly
| questionable copyright grounds just to bankrupt them and
| prevent them from being a competitor.
|
| Recently, the media industry has taken to suing ISPs for
| billions if they refuse to permanently stop offering
| service to customers who have been repeatedly accused of
| violating copyright. Without any court finding you guilty
| or any actual proof that a violation took place, if you
| are accused multiple times and your ISP doesn't
| disconnect your service forever they could be fined out
| of existence. Most of the ISPs sued so far have settled
| out of court, but the media industry has been winning in
| the courts as well.
|
| Copyright is regularly abused to do things that go far
| beyond what it was intended to, and often to the
| determent of the creation of new works. Most of the
| people hurt by such abuses have no ability to fight it,
| and very little hope of actually winning even if they
| try.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >20 years is at least 2x too long. 10 years seems far more
| reasonable to me.
|
| What about stuff that didn't land initially, but was
| discovered years/decades later and loved. Should they be
| denied the right to make a (belated) profit?
| krisroadruck wrote:
| Seems like this could be handled by something like:
|
| Either 10 years, or 10 years from when you collect your
| first dollar, so long as that first dollar is collected
| within the first 10 years - giving you potentially up to 20
| years in total.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I get the sentiment but writing the Great American Novel is no
| easy proposition. Everyone who is saying 20 years are plenty
| should first make sure their wealth doesn't come from a salary.
| Creators are taking the risk so deserve the reward. I'm fine
| with ending with the creators death. This does push the creator
| to keep creating to maximize earnings for their estate prior to
| death. Creation is hard and it shouldn't be like art where
| paintings are only valuable posthumously.
| avereveard wrote:
| the problem is that very rarely creators own the copyright,
| most of the time it's transferred to corporations. in
| principle I agree with you, but corporations should have
| restrictive limits (i.e. 20 years after first copyright
| transfer from a natural person) - and just to be sure, make
| it so that royalty contracts are null and void if they cover
| a duration longer than 5 years, so that corporation cannot
| workaround the issue buying new property for pennies using
| forever exlusive royalties and preventing renegotiation once
| the property becomes famous (i.e. avoid the current
| musicians/labels contracts where unknowns get scouted early
| and chained forever)
| snarf21 wrote:
| It seems like that could be solved by making them non-
| transferable. They can only be licensed by a corporation.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Art sale is used to launder money. The artists involved are
| irrelevant. Pablo Escobar wasn't an art buff.
| Worldblender wrote:
| I agree about how excessively long the current copyright laws
| can be, but there's a few things I wonder about that has to be
| done before that can realistically happen, along with several
| other related questions I got. Regardless of what happens in
| the end, any amount of copyright term reduction, even if that's
| only like 10 or 20 years, is better than nothing.
|
| * How will the Berne Convention from the early 1900s be dealt
| with? Since multiple countries signed onto that, how can that
| be overridden or be repelled so that at least some countries
| can start to reduce copyright terms? I know there's a few
| countries that didn't sign onto this convention, but they don't
| enough power to cause major reforms to occur.
|
| * I wish I could do it all myself, but I don't have enough
| money to convince most politicians to support such reforms.
| There's got to be some way I can easily gather like people who
| support such reforms. It's even harder if this has to happen
| outside of the United States for any meaningful reform to
| start. Where could I possibly get started on gathering like
| people for this purpose?
|
| * I know about fanworks (such as fanart, fanfiction, and
| fangames) and the like, but unfortunately, such things aren't
| tolerated when they're mixed with open-source software or
| anything with similar licensing. How come many of those can
| stay up while being legally dubious (by way of using characters
| and/or settings from pre-existing mass media without explicit
| permission from the original rightsholder(s)), but open-source
| software doesn't get that same pass, even if only for non-
| commercial purposes? Even if many rightsholders would ignore
| such things for not being worth their time to take down, it
| still doesn't feel totally right if the law was strictly
| followed.
|
| * If a (non-open source like) work gets delisted or removed
| from online stores or websites to the point where it can't be
| legally obtained anywhere (and hence can only be acquired via
| piracy), would that count as a publisher or author saying that
| they effectively revoked rights to such a work? Then if that
| work cannot be legally obtained anymore, would that also mean
| that that work can never enter the public domain unless it
| becomes available again in the future?
|
| I ask these questions in order to reduce the likelihood that I
| end up with a DMCA notice sent against any of my fanworks, that
| could potentially hurt my chances for getting future jobs. Then
| that could have a domino effect of making my life very hard if
| this gets bad enough because of not being able to find a source
| of income because people got scared of me infringing their
| copyrights. I may be exaggerating these worries, but that's
| what could happen if I strictly followed the law.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| At least for the Berne convention, is Americans can start by
| unseating incumbents and electing senators who do not care
| what treaties their predecessors have ratified.
| ep103 wrote:
| Its the Mickey Mouse problem. Disney doesn't want Mickey or
| related works to enter public domain, because it would be a
| huge knock to their current empire.
|
| Still, this seems rather easily solvable to naive little old
| me.
|
| 20 year copyright by default, with a 20 year review cycle
| process an individual/company can apply to to ask for
| extension, on the condition that they can prove harm to newly
| generated IP, if the copyright is not-renewed. Still using
| Mickey Mouse to generate new works of non-derivative IP, and
| copyright of Mickey Mouse isn't causing damage to any other
| competing agencies (the way holding IP to a new drug or
| invention would)? Fine, renew granted.
| clcaev wrote:
| Or, beyond 28 years, if the work is not released to the
| public domain, have an annual copyright tax based upon a
| "fair market" assessment of the property. To keep assessment
| real, perhaps let there be an auction starting at 2x the
| taxed value.
| hakfoo wrote:
| Wasn't there a variation of that done for some property
| taxes: you could assess your own property, but they
| reserved the right to buy it at the assessed price,
| discouraging lowballing?
|
| Right now, especially without registration required
| anymore, there is no burden to owning copyrights
| "passively". If they had to enumerate and price them, that
| alone may make it worth shedding some of them.
| gwd wrote:
| > Wasn't there a variation of that done for some property
| taxes: you could assess your own property, but they
| reserved the right to buy it at the assessed price,
| discouraging lowballing?
|
| I've come to the conclusion that this sort of property
| tax (on everything, including land, equipment,
| trademarks, and copyrighted material) is the only kind of
| tax that actually makes sense economically.
| Fundamentally, "property" is one person or entity taking
| something from society as a whole (backed in the end by
| society-sanctioned violence); "taxation" is its natural
| inverse: society as a whole taking something back from a
| person or individual (backed in the end by society-
| sanctioned violence). There's a pleasant symmetry that
| the people who have benefit the most from the setup of
| society should be the ones who fund it; and that in a
| sense, ownership must be continually "justified".
| elliekelly wrote:
| Why should Disney get an infinite copyright? I think
| copyright should be limited to natural persons. No one
| involved in the creation of Mickey Mouse is still alive.
| Imagine if the Brothers Grimm, Inc. had just kept infinitely
| renewing their copyright claim? Disney wouldn't even exist.
| Disney is a company that was _built_ upon works in the public
| domain and now is depriving the rest of the world from the
| very thing that allowed Disney to flourish in the first
| place.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Then what happens as humans solve aging and no one dies?
| There should be an age limit regardless of natural or
| corporate persons.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| > solve aging and no one dies
|
| I believe this may be an HN bubble thing. Fusion energy
| will be commercialized hundreds if not thousands of years
| before that will be reality.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| i think you're a little off the mark. Google Aubrey de
| Grey. Ageing isnt that tough of a problem
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I was being slightly facetious ;). However it is
| something I've thought about before, what happens to
| societies when no one dies, whether we'll keep the same
| customs and societal opinions forever, etc.
| elliekelly wrote:
| You might enjoy Kurt Vonnegut's short story _2BR02B_. The
| Wikipedia article[1] has links to several different
| places you can read or listen to it for free. (Though I'm
| a bit confused as to _how_ his work is already in the
| public domain since he only died relatively recently?)
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_B_R_0_2_B
| tmtvl wrote:
| It may have been published without a copyright notice? As
| it was published between 1927 and 1977, that would
| explain why it's in the public domain:
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Hirtle_chart
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Death and fusion will both be solved instantly once super
| human AI arrives.
|
| Possibly because it will kill us all immediately but
| maybe it will solve those things for us.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You know what they say, give a man a fire and you'll keep
| him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you'll keep him
| warm for the rest of his life.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Melancholy Elephants, a Hugo-winning short story, answers
| that:
| http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
| dudul wrote:
| I feel like we can revisit when we reach this point :)
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Then what happens as humans solve aging and no one
| dies?
|
| Then everything will change. Concepts like copyright
| would end up irrelevant.
| danbolt wrote:
| I'd be fine with the extension path, but in exchange I'd
| expect a fee that increases with each extension. Almost
| like a land value tax but for IP.
| clippablematt wrote:
| Harberger taxes on ip could be neat
| geysersam wrote:
| That's a really interesting idea!
| acdha wrote:
| This to me is the right answer: have an intellectual
| property tax which goes up every year. Disney can pay to
| keep Mickey locked up but all of the less popular IP
| shifts the calculation from "keep it, we might use it
| some day" to a more balanced calculation.
|
| The other thing I'd like to add is some kind of
| requirement that works be available (e.g. it should cost
| a lot more if they want to hide it in a vault) but that
| would need care to avoid publishers screwing creators if
| there's a dispute, as is not uncommon - you wouldn't want
| the threat of putting something in the public domain to
| be used to force the creator to agree to unfavorable
| terms. Maybe something like all assignment contracts are
| unconditionally voided without compensation if the
| company chooses not to make an item available for
| sale/license at standard rates for more than n days in a
| 5 year period?
| danbolt wrote:
| I like your idea a lot, but I'll admit I don't know what
| a standardized rate or one-size-fits-all solution looks
| like. Or, I have different expectations for HBO than I do
| for an individual artist producing works as a hobby.
|
| I also wonder about the implications for the copyright
| status of a "limited edition" version of a work. I'm not
| sure how that would play out.
| Tanoc wrote:
| Perhaps the fee would be a base per times renewed plus
| the worth of a portion of the total reported wealth that
| the IP has generated over it's lifetime, instead of just
| since the last renewal. So if you've made sixty thousand
| dollars over the first twenty years, you owe six thousand
| for the renewal. If you've made ninety thousand dollars
| over the next twenty years, you owe ten thousand dollars
| plus eighteen thousand for the renewal. The base fee
| scales to make it feasible for low earners, but increases
| to prevent copyright abusers from perpetually milking an
| unused IP like how Harmony Gold did with Robotech/Macross
| for thirty eight years.
| p1necone wrote:
| Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark, copyright law isn't
| even relevant.
| shibopo wrote:
| I'm actually surprised corporations aren't lobbying for this.
| Instead of coming up with original ideas, they can just take
| any works of art pre-2000 and just recycle them over and
| over.
|
| Why spend billions buying Marvel when you can do it for free,
| why spend billions for parts of the LOTR series, why spend
| billions to buy Lucas Arts.
|
| I mean Disney is built on taking public domain works and
| reworking them into their own classics. Imagine if they could
| do that with the biggest cultural uptake in human history of
| the 1900s instead of the relatively unknown 1800s stories.
|
| Don't forget streaming services like Netflix who shell out
| billions to get Seinfeld and Friends. Lobbying for 20 years
| means they get ALL the 90s instead of shelling out billions.
| unity1001 wrote:
| No extensions. The moment you allow extensions you get corps.
| like Disney.
|
| 10 years is more than enough in the current landscape of the
| Internet and the creator-driven economy/
| mannerheim wrote:
| Disney gets blamed a lot for this, but I don't really buy it.
| The copyright extension in '76 brought America into the same
| copyright duration as stipulated by the Berne Convention of
| 1886 (although the US would not sign on until a decade
| later), and the Sonny Bono act extended copyright length to
| the same as what had been harmonised in the EU a few years
| prior; Germany had had notoriously long copyright lengths,
| lasting 80 years past the death of the author at one point.
|
| Don't get me wrong, copyright length is certainly too long,
| but blaming Disney is rather Americentric, considering the US
| was rather late to the game on long copyright durations.
| nearbuy wrote:
| Another point against the Mickey Mouse theory is that the
| trend ends on January 1st, 2024. Mickey Mouse will enter
| the public domain.
| oblio wrote:
| That's assuming there's no other extension :-)
| haspok wrote:
| There is no "95 years after publication" rule in the EU, so
| you cannot say the Sonny Bono act was a "harmonization".
|
| Wikipedia also states (with some sources), that "Since
| 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright
| extension." It was in their best interest, they had the
| money, so no surprises there. I'm sure they weren't the
| only ones, but the largest, for sure.
| mannerheim wrote:
| True, although in this case the US law is perhaps better
| than the EU one; the EU lacks any exceptions for works of
| joint authorship, including works for hire, so it's 70
| years from the death of the last surviving author, which
| would usually exceed 95 years.
| radiKal07 wrote:
| What if I write a book when I'm 20 and is a huge flop but it
| gets massive success 30 years later when I'm 50?
| rgmerk wrote:
| I agree, but authors will scream blue murder and claim that
| you're depriving of their chances of any kind of security in
| retirement if you do so.
|
| Do they have a point? There are undoubtedly some creators
| making money from their old works, but I'd bet the vast
| majority of creators who do make a living from their work at
| some point (a small fraction of those who write or compose)
| make the vast majority of the royalties from their work in the
| first 20 years of its existence. Even more so when you apply
| appropriate present values to future royalties.
|
| But when I looked for actual evidence to support or refute this
| point the quality of evidence in the public domain is extremely
| weak - either anecdata from prominent authors, or very poor-
| quality aggregate data from economists supporting liberalizing
| copyright.
|
| If I didn't need to earn a living would be fun and useful to do
| a PhD examining this question properly.
| briga wrote:
| A lot of famous writers today lived in poverty and obscurity
| and sold very few books until their old age. Seems like it
| would be unfair for them to not profit from their life's work
| just because it's more than 20 years old.
| hnfong wrote:
| Yet copyright persists a constant number of years after the
| author's death. Is there anyone seriously arguing that a
| person should profit from their life's work even after
| they're dead?
| epigramx wrote:
| 1927 is 95 years.
| grishka wrote:
| 3-5 years AT MOST. 20 years is an eternity in today's world.
| Most of the revenue a creative work generates comes in the
| first few months after its release anyway. For movies, the
| revenue from outside of cinema screenings is not even
| considered for statistical purposes.
|
| It would also make some sense to make copyright non-
| transferable.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| Are films in the public domain legally copiable?
| postalrat wrote:
| Make a copy or make a sequel.
| slim wrote:
| yes
| ogogmad wrote:
| Is Battleship Potemkin in the PD in both Europe and the US?
| choeger wrote:
| I came to the conviction that digital artworks, any form of
| digital property, really, needs a public clearinghouse.
|
| You simply shouldn't be allowed to sell any digital license for a
| product you didn't register at that clearinghouse before. The
| task of that clearinghouse would be to provide the customer with
| the bought content in case of dispute or any other problems. So
| if, e.g, Amazon goes out of business, all my books would be
| available for me to download from said clearinghouse because I
| own the license. Same for steam games or Disney videos.
|
| Many (but not all) of the problems with DRM or copyrighted works
| would vanish if we established this legal requirement.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Franz Kafka, Amerika
|
| Looking forward to someone taking AI/ChatGPT and finishing the
| unfinished book.
| cauthon wrote:
| Question about how public domain works in the US, specifically
| with regards to this comment in the original post:
|
| > Here are just a few of the works that will be in the US public
| domain in 2023. 2 They were supposed to go into the public domain
| in 2003, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this
| could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended
| their copyright term to 95 years.
|
| Is the "20 year pause button" permanent, i.e. copyright term for
| all works moving forward will be 95 years? Or will that
| eventually expire and the term will revert to 75 years?
| not2b wrote:
| Permanent. The term is 95 years now, unless Congress changes
| the law. And reducing it would be very difficult legally, with
| copyright holders suing for their theoretical losses if
| Congress "deprives" them of 20 years of protection that they
| now consider their property.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| You could simply reduce it on a go-forward basis,
| grandfathering in works that are currently covered by the 95
| year term.
|
| Not going to happen of course, regardless. But laws change
| all the time, and grandfather clauses generally make it a
| solved problem.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I don't know if those suits would succeed. If Congress gives
| someone a benefit and then gets rid of it, then you can't sue
| the government to force them to keep giving it to you.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| You can, and it'll go through the federal courts. Your case
| might be quickly dismissed, or it might eventually cause a
| Consitution question to the Supreme Court. Or not.
| [deleted]
| incompatible wrote:
| It won't be 95 years forever. For works created in or after
| 1978, the term is the life of the author plus 70 years.
| joshspankit wrote:
| That might conceivably be _over 170 years_
| sircastor wrote:
| So I might be able to see Star Wars enter public domain, but
| The Empire Strikes Back is outside the realm of a human
| lifespan.
| [deleted]
| jteppinette wrote:
| Copyright, Trademark, and Patent Law should not exist. Contract
| law and trade secrets cover all necessary use cases. Checkout
| Stephan Kinsela @NSKinsella for more info.
| postalrat wrote:
| So you don't mind me taking all the frontend from
| https://easypub.io/
|
| Or doing whatever I want from any code of yours in github.
| jteppinette wrote:
| I don't mind at all. I am open sourcing it, and it is free
| lol.
| LastTrain wrote:
| I found this thread's Libertarian!
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym), The Tower Treasure (the first
| Hardy Boys book)
|
| I loved those books growing up
| lb1lf wrote:
| As did I, my father had talked my grandfather into buying them
| as they were released in Norwegian in the fifties, so I had
| some fifty books on my shelves and read them all, some several
| times.
|
| I adored them, but in hindsight: Gawds, how formulaic they
| were. I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably
| churn out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days.
|
| Excellent childhood memories, though - along with Anthony
| Buckeridge's Jennings books, I spent more time with Hardy Boys
| books during rainy summers than I care admit.
| twiddling wrote:
| "I bet with some practice, a ghostwriter could probably churn
| out a Hardy Boys book in a couple of days."
|
| AI written pulp
| joshspankit wrote:
| Consider this:
|
| At 75 years past the death of the creator it's possible you
| cannot use _anything_ that came out throughout your entire life.
| Nothing you grew up with, nothing that inspired you, nothing that
| speaks to the life you lived.
|
| It's even possible that your children _and your grandchildren_
| will not be able to use anything you knew. Definitely not
| anything they knew.
|
| We're in real danger of cultural death with these rules
| restricting our expression.
|
| Thankfully current artists have the option of open licenses for
| their works.
|
| If I could, I would flip a switch right now where I am only
| exposed to things with open licenses for the rest of my life.
|
| I'm happy to forget about everything Disney ever made. They can
| go put it in the vault forever and protect it with all the
| lawyers and guards in the world. I will never ask them to release
| it and they can feel safe that no one will be able to "steal" it.
| [deleted]
| dahart wrote:
| > it's possible you cannot use anything that came out
| throughout your entire life. Nothing you grew up with, nothing
| that inspired you, nothing that speaks to the life you live.
|
| What do you mean by "use"? You can't _sell_ someone else's
| creation just because you like it, that's true. You can't
| _copy_ it and send it to others or post it online. But why
| should you be able to do those things? Why are you implying
| that legal restrictions on stealing them for your own profit,
| or redistributing things for free alike, is akin to not being
| able to enjoy culture?
|
| You are allowed to view/watch/listen/consume legally obtained
| copies, and be inspired by them. You & teachers/schools are
| allowed to made educational copies for school. You are allowed
| to pay homage to things you grew up with, artistically, and
| share snippets and some kinds of remix under Fair Use. You can
| copy styles legally without copying content, if you want. You
| are allowed to have and hold any culture you want. You are
| allowed to create new work and give it to anyone you want.
|
| This seems like FUD. Copyrights have been longer than the
| average lifespan for more than 100 years and we still have
| plenty of culture - spread of culture has even been
| accelerating in many ways. Strong arguments do exist for
| reducing and/or weakening copyrights, but pretending that
| copyrights prevent the spread of arts and culture isn't
| accurate. (And might be willfully blind to the intended and
| actual ways that copyrights successfully promote cultural
| development and incentivize new creative works.)
| joshspankit wrote:
| Talk to the people who have created games based on existing
| characters: they made their own original work because they
| loved it, put in hundreds of hours, released it for free, and
| had their work taken off the internet with a cease and
| desist.
|
| We see examples like that all the time. When was the last
| time someone was able to make their own popular movie from
| existing characters without facing some type of legal action?
| And I'm not talking about the "30% different loophole" where
| creators have to figure out the balance between recognizable
| and alienating.
| dahart wrote:
| Can you share some specific examples? Using someone else's
| existing characters is probably stealing/infringing. That
| is not 100% original work. I haven't heard about this being
| a big problem, most people know you can't borrow characters
| from big studio productions without facing legal action, so
| they don't attempt it.
|
| Edit to mention up higher that when using someone else's
| characters is trademark infringement, that is completely
| different and doesn't support your arguments about
| copyright at all.
| thekombustor wrote:
| Nintendo is infamous for this, not only games
| specifically but mostly any "works" that relate to their
| content at all, including YouTube videos and also mods to
| long extinct games.
| dahart wrote:
| Correct. The cases you're citing are people who are
| taking Nintendo's work and redistributing it. YouTube
| channels have been challenged when people include music
| from their games, which is copyright infringement. Mods
| to long extinct games are still distributions of
| Nintendo's work, they are not original work. These are
| all examples of trying to use Nintendo's IP and
| redistribute it without Nintendo's permission. As much as
| we might not like it, and whether or not Nintendo is
| actively marketing it, what's missing here is a valid
| argument for why people _should_ be able to borrow
| Nintendo's work.
|
| BTW your example may be wading in to Trademark territory,
| which is not the same thing a copyright and doesn't apply
| to this discussion.
| elsjaako wrote:
| Nintendo's work isn't a physical, limited good in their
| possession. It's not like a car or a handbag.
|
| This type of property is protected by law. This isnt the
| natural state of things, once upon a time you could just
| retell a story you heard. We as a society have decided to
| give Nintendo a temporary monopoly. Why do we do this?
| Different people give different arguments, but for me the
| reason is that I like Nintendo games, and I want Nintento
| to keep making them, and they're more likely to make it
| if we give them an additional edge to make money making
| games.
|
| With that perspective, I would argue that you should be
| able to use their work, as long as it isn't likely to
| stop them from producing more content. Mods to long
| extinct games seem like a clear example where this is the
| case.
|
| I'm not saying this is how the law is, I'm saying I think
| the law as it stands restricts people way to much for the
| purposes it serves to the people.
| joshspankit wrote:
| > most people know you can't borrow characters from big
| studio productions without facing legal action, so they
| don't attempt it.
|
| This fear is exactly my point. It even gets much thornier
| and much more chilling when the law isn't as clear (since
| people proactively avoid things they think _might_ result
| in legal action).
| sb057 wrote:
| It's worse than that, there are still works that predate the
| founding of the United States of America that are still under
| copyright:
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2012/09/19/what-public-domain-why-l...
|
| Originally authored in 1755, set to expire in 2052, a mere 297
| years after it was originally written!
| fyfirhffuug wrote:
| >We're in real danger of cultural death with these rules
| restricting our expression.<
|
| Isn't it sort of the opposite? Without these rules we'd be
| stuck drowning in an even larger and blander sea of retellings
| and reimaginings. The only time I see this considered noble or
| akin to staving off death is when the culture being preserved
| is already stagnating anyway.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Right in this very moment there are hundreds if not thousands
| of musicians making music absolutely terrified that they will
| accidentally use prior works they can't get permission for
| (or can't afford).
|
| Some are terrified they'll use "the wrong sample" (is there a
| list of wrong samples? no), some are even terrified they'll
| accidentally "create" a chord progression that someone else
| already has the rights to.
|
| In these cases, that artist can end up getting a little
| popularity and maybe even a little income, then end up in
| debt with the song pulled from the internet, never to be
| played by them again.
| fyfirhffuug wrote:
| dahart wrote:
| Speaking as a part-time musician that knows a lot of
| musicians, I don't know anyone who's worried about
| accidentally using prior works... that sentence doesn't
| make a lot of sense, unless you're talking about DJs &
| sampling & remixing specifically? In that case all samples
| are infringing, there doesn't need to be a list of wrong
| samples, because all creative authors automatically have
| copy rights of their works, in the US. Sampling and
| remixing is somewhat tolerated as long as you steer
| completely clear of copying the whole song, and I've heard
| precedent tends to favor cases where people sample from
| multiple source and not just one other song.
|
| Can you share some example cases of the debt you're talking
| about? I'm not aware of any major problem along the lines
| you're describing for people who are creating new music and
| not intentionally infringing a little bit.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I apologize because this will come off as dismissive, but
| I don't mean it that way:
|
| I'm specifically talking about musicians who make their
| living through music and who have enough exposure (say,
| through album sales) to have the attention of the rival
| record companies.
|
| I say that because in the case of musicians who are "off
| the radar" the rules don't really apply. Heck, it's rare
| for a musician to get in trouble for playing an _exact
| copy_ of a popular song at a small venue, but even then I
| think they all know that they could never release that
| song on Spotify or YouTube or anywhere else that's
| "official" and that's a demonstration of the kind of fear
| I'm talking about.
| dahart wrote:
| Can you share some specific examples? Which musicians?
| The 'rival record companies' comment hints that you're
| talking about something different than copyright
| problems. But you're also bringing up many vague fears
| and not citing examples. People can be scared of a lot of
| things, that doesn't mean it's reality. I'm trying to get
| a sense of what exactly you're referring to because it
| sounds like you are tip-toeing around cases where people
| are actually infringing and trying to get away with it.
| Sampling is tolerated sometimes, but not legal. If you go
| down that road, you can't necessarily expect to not be
| challenged.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >Without these rules we'd be stuck drowning in an even larger
| and blander sea of retellings and reimaginings.
|
| Imagine saying that statement unironically in a world where
| the MCU and Disney's Starwars exists.
| TheDong wrote:
| > Without these rules we'd be stuck drowning in an even
| larger and blander sea of retellings and reimaginings
|
| This experiment has been run in the form of open source
| software. The point of the GPL license, and other open source
| licenses, is to remove the restrictions of copyright from a
| work, and encourage people to reuse it, copy it, share it,
| modify it, etc.
|
| Has open source software ended up as a "larger and blander"
| sea of software "retellings" compared to proprietary
| software? Was the Xi Editor (RIP
| https://raphlinus.github.io/xi/2020/06/27/xi-
| retrospective.h...) a bland remix of ed? Even moreso than
| proprietary editors like sublime text?
|
| Has there been no progress in Haskell, an open source
| language, due to the lack of copyright's limitations? Is all
| non-bland (spicy?) innovation in software done under
| copyright, and licensed out to other developers so they may
| enjoy some type system or language?
|
| Open source software to me seems like a very clear counter
| example to your fear.
| 9dev wrote:
| I think you got this quite wrong.
|
| > Has open source software ended up as a "larger and
| blander" sea of software "retellings" compared to
| proprietary software?
|
| By all means, yes! There are so many open source clones of
| proprietary software, lots of stuff that is solved, but fun
| to rewrite, so people do it. How many pointless gnome
| themes are there? How many web servers, media players,
| databases?
|
| That's survivor bias. The number of bland, irrelevant forks
| on GitHub far outnumbers the few relevant projects, it's
| just that we, as software developers, have found ways to
| ignore those as we sift through options.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| So the system adapted and we are all better of due to
| that. That warrants the question why we should expect
| anything else with copyright?
| berniedurfee wrote:
| It's survivor bias in the same way humans have survived
| all of the various failed experiments of evolution.
|
| I think it's a question of progress vs profit. Though, I
| also think there needs to be a reasonably balance between
| the two.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So what? Nothing I grew up with is public domain. My culture
| belongs to corporations and I don't expect them to enter the
| public domain until after I'm long dead.
| christkv wrote:
| Is there a similar site for things going out of copyright in the
| eu?
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Steamboat Willie, which was an early (first?) appearance of
| Mickey Mouse, is 1928 so this next year could be interesting for
| copyright law
| seabass wrote:
| Is there a resource that hosts public domain content in a
| browsable, searchable format? I am really excited to see that
| Metropolis will be in the public domain soon--but where would I
| go to download it?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://archive.org
|
| https://archive.org/details/metropolis.1927.fritz-lang
| yardstick wrote:
| To those that believe copyright should be limited to a decade or
| two, what is your answer to Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer
| Programming? It has been around since 1962, and yes has had new
| volumes added over time. Should Donald have been forced to give
| up his copyright and revenue stream in the 80s for a book that is
| still popular today? The book is reasonably priced at around $60.
|
| 1. https://www.informit.com/promotions/art-of-computer-
| programm...
| taink wrote:
| I don't see how his work should be an exception to what people
| are saying otherwise. Since it is popular, as you say, it
| should all the more be freed of copyrights.
|
| Given Knuth's prolific bibliography, he has other revenue
| streams from more recent publications (including more recently
| published volumes). His name remains on the cover of the work,
| so he still gets social benefits from having written a deeply
| influential book (which will be even more accessible once freed
| of copyright!).
|
| I also don't see how $60 for a single volume seems reasonable
| -- most books aren't that expensive and this price point
| constitutes a big barrier to entry.
| ddevault wrote:
| TAOCP is not a single entity; each volume has its own copyright
| term. The original purpose of copyright is not to enable rent
| seeking, but to encourage artists to keep making new works. So
| as old volumes of TAOCP fall out of copyright, it incentivizes
| Knuth to write new volumes. It would be the system working as
| designed.
| yardstick wrote:
| Would you agree with: post copyright expiration, no one,
| original author or otherwise, should be able to profit from
| it?
|
| Ie if I were to sell TAOCP after the copyright expired, can I
| sell it at a price above the costs of printing, distribution,
| etc? Because any profit would be rent-seeking.
| ddevault wrote:
| No, I don't agree with that. In fact I'm a copyright
| abolitionist.
| yardstick wrote:
| Isn't copyright abolitionist the most rent-seeking
| position? Obtaining wealth without any part in its
| creation.
| ddevault wrote:
| That's not how rent seeking works. Rent seeking requires
| exclusive access to a resource, i.e. an apartment in the
| original metaphor. Nothing prevents the author from
| monetizing it, too, and they get first-mover advantage
| and other legs up besides.
| yardstick wrote:
| First line of Wikipedia (and OED) on rent seeking:
|
| "Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth
| without creating new wealth by manipulating the social or
| political environment."
|
| Describes copyright abolishment quite aptly.
| e-v wrote:
| Donald Knuth is (fortunately) still alive.
| yardstick wrote:
| Sure, but this is for those arguing for copyright from date
| of issue + X years, irrespective of the author being alive
| still or not.
| bnj wrote:
| First, even if the book lost copyright protection people would
| still be free to support the author by buying copies,
|
| Second, if the book lost copyright protection wouldn't Donald,
| losing that revenue stream, then be motivated to replace it by
| writing a follow up book?
|
| Artists should be able to benefit from their works, but your
| question implies (to me) that because a work is popular artists
| have a right to continue to profit. You ask if they should be
| "forced" to "give up their copyright". I think it's good to
| keep in mind that anything copyrighted is being withheld from
| society at large; that we collectively pay a tax to authors in
| the form of giving up our collective right to remix and
| recombine works and profit from them in turn.
|
| Particularly in the modern world of effortless free duplication
| and distribution, that's a heavy burden to pay and it makes no
| sense to me that we would collectively agree to pay it for many
| decades even after the original author is dead.
| yardstick wrote:
| > First, even if the book lost copyright protection people
| would still be free to support the author by buying copies,
|
| This would pale in comparison to the status quo. There's just
| too many people who don't pay to support free things. Just
| look at how open source projects often struggle to find
| funding, or relicense to non-open licenses. Or how often the
| open source project isn't the persons full time job.
|
| > Second, if the book lost copyright protection wouldn't
| Donald, losing that revenue stream, then be motivated to
| replace it by writing a follow up book?
|
| I can't speak to anyone else's motivations but my own, but
| for me, no, I wouldn't even bother writing the first book.
|
| > that because a work is popular artists have a right to
| continue to profit.
|
| Authors like Knuth should benefit from the wealth they helped
| others created. TAOCP provides a wealth of knowledge the
| reader can use to improve the quality of their work product.
| This is still a benefit long past a few decades.
|
| > I think it's good to keep in mind that anything copyrighted
| is being withheld from society at large;
|
| It was not societies property in the first place.
| fjfaase wrote:
| Please note that this list is for the U.S.A.. If you live in
| another part of the world, these books might still be
| copyrighted. For example, in the Netherlands (like most of the
| EU), it is +70 years, meaning we still have to wait 5 more years.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_public_domain
| mod50ack wrote:
| Note that for a number of EU countries, US works are in the
| public domain once they are PD-US due to the application of the
| rule of the shorter term.
| londons_explore wrote:
| And in other countries, it's really unlikely you'll end up in
| prison or sued for using something that is both 75 years old
| and already public domain elsewhere in the world.
| fjfaase wrote:
| There are a number of books that are based on Winnie-the-
| Pooh and quoting fragments. For a long time, I have had the
| idea to write a kind of annotated version of the stories
| with references to all the books that reference the text.
|
| I understand Disney has the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh
| character and that they still might cause trouble for those
| who publish text from the books in Europe.
| mod50ack wrote:
| None of A. A. Milne's work will enter the PD anywhere in
| the EU until 2027, including all the elements of his
| character Winnie the Pooh, not counting elements
| introduced by other writers who added more later.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Germany forced Project Gutenberg to take down a few books
| for Germans who used the site a couple years ago, despite
| the site being entirely operated from the US.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Sounds reasonable.
| mannerheim wrote:
| It's not reasonable for someone to assume liability in a
| country they don't operate in.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Did they block German traffic? And thats not snark:
| English gambling sites used to have to block US traffic
| fjfaase wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024039 for an
| earlier discussion and details about this.
| mod50ack wrote:
| It's about equally unlikely that you'll end up in prison or
| sued for downloading copyrighted content in the United
| States, especially if it is PD elsewhere. In fact, if it is
| PD elsewhere, the chances of your being prosecuted for
| downloading it approach zero.
|
| Works passing into the public domain have very little to do
| with people actually getting practically slapped around for
| downloading them. But they have EVERYTHING to do with
| creating derivative works. If you create a film based on a
| book that is PD-US but still copyrighted in the EU, you can
| expect to get sued.
|
| PD terms also affect legal libraries and archive
| significantly.
| incompatible wrote:
| Some works from that era still have publishers enforcing
| the copyright wherever they can. I remember some disputes
| about the Sherlock Holmes books which expired in life + 70
| countries but were still under copyright in the USA.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Jan 1, 2023 will also be a fine day for film in the public
| domain, with Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, and Laurel and Hardy's
| Battle of the Century entering the commons. Also notable: Wings,
| winner of the first-ever best picture Academy Award; The Lodger,
| Hitchcock's first thriller; and FW "Nosferatu" Mirnau's Sunrise.
|
| _Metropolis_ is so influential that I 'd call it a must-watch
| for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind.
| Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its
| influence is everywhere.
|
| _Sunrise_ is one hell of a roller-coaster of a movie. As with
| anything in the silent era (especially the non-comedy films) it
| 's a bit of an _acquired taste_ but it 's among the earliest
| films that I didn't just find interesting or funny, but that
| really got me on the edge of my seat, several times. It's got
| some real "yell at the screen" moments :-) I enjoyed it way more
| than the director's more-iconic _Nosferatu_. Though, for my
| money, it 's no _M_ or _The Passion of Joan of Arc_ , as silent
| film dramas go. Still, really good, and I think a lot of critics
| hold it in far higher regard than I do.
|
| Haven't seen the rest.
|
| > On the literary front, we have Virginia Woolf's To The
| Lighthouse, AA Milne's Now We Are Six, Hemingway's Men Without
| Women, Faulkner's Mosquitoes, Christie's The Big Four, Wharton's
| Twilight Sleep, Hesse's Steppenwolf (in German), Kafka's Amerika
| (in German), and Proust's Le Temps retrouve (in French).
|
| Damn, what a powerhouse year in literature. And look at that, my
| favorite novel ( _To the Lighthouse_ ) is about to be public
| domain!
|
| The Holmes news is awesome, too. Bunch of copyright troll dicks
| have been making doing anything with Holmes risky for years.
| Great that everyone can more-easily ignore them.
| orblivion wrote:
| I wonder how the efforts to reassemble and restore Metropolis
| from the various archives factor into its legal status. Does
| that count as a derivative work with its own copyright?
| slater- wrote:
| yes, it's true, I keep hearing the people everywhere clamoring
| for their shot at remaking "The Jazz Singer."
|
| (something something blackface)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It was re-made in 1980 with Neil Diamond and Laurence
| Olivier:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Getting to see 'Metropolis' in a restored movie palace with a
| live organist playing the entire time was quite the nice
| experience. Not sure I want to watch it at home and taint that
| experience. Still nice for others to have the option and for
| free.
| ghghgfdfgh wrote:
| This is the craziest thing about copyright law. Maybe it's fair
| that an author and his family should receive compensation for
| their work even after their deaths.
|
| But Sunrise was released 95 years ago - the odds are that there
| is nobody alive who worked on this movie, nobody alive that
| even saw it in theaters. Why is it _not_ publicly available? I
| doubt anyone is earning significant money off of an extremely
| old movie that caters to a niche audience - if the media is so
| old that it is both literally and aesthetically irrelevant in
| society, it 's astounding that it wouldn't have been in the
| public domain already. It's a massive shame that Disney's
| corporate plots have been a detriment to other media that isn't
| generating huge profits. I only wish that "Steamboat Willie"
| going into the public domain will bring about some sort of
| copyright reform.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I very much doubt that anyone involved in Sunrise is pushing
| for the "copyright extensions".
|
| Steamboat Willie on the other hand... Even when he finally
| goes, Disney will be arguing for every single version of
| Mickey Mouse as a separately-copyrightable entity and
| therefore keep hold of him for even longer.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Puttin' on the Ritz, covered by everyone from Taco to Young
| Frankenstein. What a joy to improve upon Irving Berlin's
| nearly-flawless lyrics ;)
|
| Jeeves & Wooster 'Puttin' on the Ritz
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E
| whycome wrote:
| Metropolis + AI could result in some cool outputs.
| runarberg wrote:
| It actually could be kind of interesting to have AI fill in
| the missing segments. I believe there are only 2 remaining,
| and we roughly know what is supposed to be there, but not
| able to restore it because of how few original copies remain.
| So you should be able to do a supervised learning to
| interpolate the remaining scenes and be fairly confident that
| it matches the version that was premiered in 1927.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >Metropolis is so influential that I'd call it a must-watch
| for... well, basically any fan of popular media of any kind.
| Film, literature, graphic arts, video games, music(!). Its
| influence is everywhere.
|
| And notice that it managed to be extremely influential WITHOUT
| being in public domain.
| grujicd wrote:
| I disliked Metropolis quite a lot. Maybe it was influential and
| was probably a gamechanger at a time. But is it good in any way
| from today's point of view? I'm not talking about effects or
| scenography which could not technically be better at that era.
| I'm talking about acting and script which look abysmal to me. I
| would probably not have this kind of opinion but it's often on
| some kind of top list and my expectations were high. Maybe I'm
| missing something? Or is it just touted for historical
| significance?
|
| It's not that I have a problem with old movies. Casablanca came
| out only 15 years after Metropolis and is perfect in every way
| I care about.
| wazoox wrote:
| Acting in silent movies is entirely different from what came
| later. That's why most silent stars didn't make it into the
| "talkie" era.
|
| Just like aliens in 60s movies speak English and are
| obviously people in disguise, you just have to adhere to the
| conventions of the time.
|
| Similarly, the ways to make the script go forward are usually
| quite different from what came later, because of the constant
| interruption required by text inserts.
|
| Last, the musical score is important. A bad one can make of
| break a silent film (versions from archive.org and similar
| sites often have random music instead of a true score).
|
| So you may need to learn the way of the silent movies before
| really appreciating them (out of slapstick comedy such as
| Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton).
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Silent-era sensibilities are very different from even WWII-
| era talkies. The field developed whole bunch, very fast. A
| lot of those films are difficult to appreciate without active
| effort to acclimatize oneself to them, much the same way lots
| of people bounce off classical music or jazz (or hip-hop, or
| heavy metal, or most musical genres, really) until they've
| had a bit more exposure and learned _how_ to enjoy them.
| Plus, a lot of them were leaning _really hard_ into one
| movement or another, and Metropolis is one of those (many)
| cases, so what it 's _aiming_ to do well isn 't necessarily
| the same set of things most modern films would aim to do well
| (and indeed, off the beaten path you can find plenty of
| modern films that similarly target some particular effect or
| art movement, which can also take a bit of adjustment to
| one's expectations to enjoy)
|
| Acting in particular has gone through some serious changes as
| fashions come and go, and most any style one encounters aside
| from what's now in-vogue tends to come off as corny. Even
| Casablanca, which is ahead of its time in many ways (for an
| American movie, anyway--the US lagged in some film technique
| developments at the time, compared with other markets)
| features acting that's less-naturalistic than what's popular
| now. Also, changes in editing have really made a difference
| in how performances come across, which is _part_ of why
| watching a scene being filmed from a behind-the-scenes camera
| can make the acting seem off or bad--because it 's not being
| filtered through modern shot-framing and editing.
|
| IMO the comedies suffer the least and remain fairly
| accessible (no matter when you were born, if you can't laugh
| at Chaplin and Keaton, there's something wrong with you) but,
| for most people, approaching the rest of the silent era is
| more a _project_ than something you can just dip into here
| and there and expect to have a good time. The field was
| immature, the whole "silent" part of it takes some getting
| used to, and there was a whole lot of art-movement-influenced
| experimentation going on.
|
| There is, however, a lot of variety in styles in the silent
| film era, especially in foreign film. If you don't like 20s
| German expressionist films, try films of the 30s (IMO the
| silent era got a _lot_ better toward the end), try American
| films, try French, try Spanish, Russian, stuff like that.
| Weird absurdist Spanish films that evoke the atmosphere of
| Monty Python, shocking short films, heart-rending dramas,
| cheap action schlock, about-the-town documentary or semi-
| fictional films, heavy-handed allegory--lots of stuff to
| explore. Plus the comedies, of which many are excellent and
| most are fairly accessible to a modern audience.
|
| [EDIT] If you want something a bit easier to chew on, from
| the same director as Metropolis, _M_ , which I mentioned in
| my first post, is much closer to a modern film, in terms of
| its storytelling and its plot structure.
| nix0n wrote:
| The thing that you're missing is the reappearance in other
| places of Metropolis's visual style. It's probably easier to
| see if you're a fan of Art Deco. It might also be easier to
| see if you watch Tron, which also was influential via visual
| style (in a different direction and lesser degree than
| Metropolis).
| wodenokoto wrote:
| A lot of people feel the same way about Casablanca.
|
| My advice is: you don't have to like it.
|
| If you are lucky you'll stumble across an article or YouTube
| video that goes into details about how metropolis inspired
| movies _you_ love and on the back of that you can rewatch it
| as a sort of "behind the scenes" experience.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Really like this idea of considering it BTS. Going to file
| that one away for future use. Appreciate it!
| t-writescode wrote:
| Does anyone know any motions in place to adjust copyright to a
| more reasonable time frame, even providing exceptions for
| companies like Disney, which harm all of us by their continual
| extension? It'd be nice to know what group to throw money at and
| ask how I can help.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Will the relevant YouTube videos that are "blocked in my country
| on copyright grounds" get unblocked on that day?
|
| Anyone from YouTube know if this is the case?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| How magnanimous of the corporations that have a stranglehold on
| our culture to allow us peons to have access to works nearly a
| century old.
|
| Thank you, corporate masters.
| dark-star wrote:
| ...that is, unless Disney can force another extension to
| Copyright law in the next couple days. I wouldn't be surprised if
| they did (or tried, at least)
| Gigachad wrote:
| Tbh it would have been better if we just allowed corporations
| to continue paying to extend their own copyrights forever and
| everything that's no longer commercially viable or doesn't have
| an entity owning it just gets freed quickly.
| efsavage wrote:
| Yes, they should be able to pay a fee to extend beyond a fair
| time (~50 years?) based on a declared value of the work. To
| ensure the declared value is realistic, they then must sell
| the work to anyone that offers more than the declared value.
| ygjb wrote:
| I couldn't possibly see how studios would abuse buying up
| rights to content and shelving them...
|
| _looks at the fiasco related to content being shelved at
| WB for tax write-offs_
|
| Under that model corporations could buy up content that
| should become public domain, depriving the public of rights
| to it, and get a tax credit for it :P
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Can you explain how this is better? Also, how would we write
| a law to determine if something is "commercially viable"?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The idea is specifically to solve the orphan works problem.
|
| Practically speaking, life+70 is not that far off from
| perpetual copyright _anyway_. Nobody cares if a book
| published today will be escheated to the public domain in
| 2093, and very few works from 1927 are valuable enough to
| retain copyright today. In fact, it 's so valueless that
| the vast majority of works still under copyright do not
| have public documentation of title. The only way to find
| out who owns these works is to get sued for pirating them.
|
| So the idea is to create some kind of small formality that
| people have to jump through in order to retain ownership
| over a work, because _vastly more_ works will hit the
| public domain even if it means Mickey Mouse will always and
| forever live in a cramped pet store cage shaped like a
| circle-C.
|
| How to define "commercially viable" is... complicated. You
| can either make copyright fully pay-to-play to soak Disney,
| or you can err on the side of cheap renewals. I've also
| heard talk of sliding-scales based on taxable value of the
| property under copyright. I don't think it really matters
| as long as we have a reasonable process to strip orphan
| works of their copyright protection.
| bombcar wrote:
| Mickey Mouse should be under copyright and Mickey Mouse
| should be taxed to an inch of his nasty rodent life are
| two separate questions and should be handled as such. A
| small fee should be fine (much less than the total cost
| of a patent, say) perhaps with a requirement to keep the
| work publicly available (print on demand and digital
| makes this relatively easy).
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > The only way to find out who owns these works is to get
| sued for pirating them.
|
| Basically "old time radio" too.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The copyright owner determines that. Put some price on
| renewal and let the owner decide if they want to pay it or
| not. For the vast majority of content, it's worthless after
| x years and they will just let it lapse.
|
| We could then shorten copyright down to something like 20
| years and anything still being sold or used can be renewed
| while completely obsolete gameboy games become freed.
|
| Even if the fee was something like $10/year, probably the
| majority of copyrights would not be renewed.
| MarioMan wrote:
| If the copyright makes more money than it costs to
| maintain, then it is financially viable. I often see this
| approach proposed alongside a renewal fee that rises each
| time it is renewed, so that works will eventually become
| too expensive to maintain copyright on and thus aren't held
| in perpetuity.
| joshspankit wrote:
| What stops people from buying 1000 copyrights, then using
| the profitable ones to pay the ongoing fees while also
| buying more?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| The law isn't making that determination, the entities
| paying to indefinitely extend its copyright are (presumably
| at exponentially increasing rates). If it isn't viable,
| they don't pay and the copyright lapses.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| As in as a company you have to pay to extend copyright on a
| certain work.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Then we just get super-sized patent trolls who pay the
| copyright fees for everything they can get their hands on
| regulation_d wrote:
| I strongly disagree. And not just because copyright in
| perpetuity is unconstitutional. The value in a rich public
| domain is vastly under-appreciated. The default position is
| that IP is not protectable by law, because the free exchange
| of ideas is extremely important to modern society.
|
| Certainly we have carved out exceptions to that default
| position, but only for very clear and distinct policy
| reasons. 1. consumer protection (trademark) and 2.
| incentivizing innovation and expression (patent and
| copyright).
|
| The idea that my great-great-grandchildren might want to
| benefit from my having written a book really does not factor
| into whether I might write a book. If I'm not incentivized by
| life of the author + 70 years, I would probably not otherwise
| be incentivized.
|
| Also, corporations don't pay to extend their copyrights.
| Other than the money Disney pays their lobbyists.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm doubting a Republican Congress will go out of its way to
| support Disney. The fake "culture wars" may yield some
| unintended benefits.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Disney is over lobbying for copyright and instead went for the
| legal gymnastics gold of extending Trademark protections (which
| never expire) to things that should fall under copyright law.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Steamboat Willie doesn't go public domain until 2024, so
| there's technically another year.
|
| Disney is unlikely to attempt to push through another copyright
| term extension (see https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i... for fuller details). The two
| main reasons are that there is a much more forceful caucus in
| politics against copyright extension than there was 25 years
| ago, and the arguments for doing so are weaker (the copyright
| extension 25 years ago was partially driven by raising
| copyright term in the US from "life + 50" to "life + 70", in
| line with European standards).
|
| If one pays careful attention however, one would note that
| Disney has, over the past few years, started using a clip from
| Steamboat Willie more aggressively in its films, which has led
| many to wonder if they're planning on taking down anyone who
| distributes Steamboat Willie on the basis of trademark
| violations instead.
| class4behavior wrote:
| In this case "European standards" are the product of US
| corporations - among others - laying foundation for the
| support of reforms at home.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Life + 50 was in much of Europe in 1886 with the Berne
| Convention. Germany had a copyright duration of 80 years
| after the death of the author at one point; blaming US
| corporations for this is absurd when Europe has had plenty
| of domestic publishers with entrenched interests in longer
| copyright durations.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| European copyright laws have often been much stricter than
| in the US, in part because publishers have long been very
| close to the state (in countries like France and Germanu
| for example). If anything, Europe has been the bad
| influence historically, and has pionniered copyright
| treaties as the sibling comment mentions. It's crazy what
| some Europeans can blame the US for though.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I've noticed them putting steam boat willie in all of the
| credits, at the same time things were going into the public
| domain, I had always assumed that was the game plan.
|
| Make steamboat willie trademark not copyright, and the laws
| become a lot more flexible around that.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They have said they wont because people notice and care now.
|
| Thats an interest way of interacting in society. I want that
| power.
| Sunspark wrote:
| No extension in the next couple days, but there will be another
| 20+ year extension purchased within the next 11 years. Why? To
| make sure 1938 doesn't go PD.
|
| I will leave it up to the reader as an exercise to determine
| what is special about 1938.
| daemoens wrote:
| What's special about 1938?
| leviathant wrote:
| I'm going to guess the reference here is Superman
| Sunspark wrote:
| That's right! DC Comics is owned by Warner Brothers.
|
| In 1939 you have Namor the Sub-Mariner which is owned by
| Disney.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I wonder what Siegel and Shuster would say
| andirk wrote:
| When Itchy & Scratchy teamed up for the war effort [0]?
| Documents on Prescott Bush, grandfather of Bush Jr, who
| happily sold steel to the Nazis and created the current Bush
| family pile [1]?
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vhL6QsPGac
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondw
| orl...
| ebiester wrote:
| Is the start of the golden age of comic books enough? I'm
| honestly not convinced.
| astrange wrote:
| DC certainly isn't succeeding at a media empire lately,
| though I guess they have 11 years to go.
|
| There's a lot of valuable stories in Golden Age comics. One
| thing that makes them unique(?) is so many of them are
| total surreal nonsense, like the writers hadn't slept in a
| month, or their studios all had carbon monoxide leaks.
| Don't think you'll get that from a modern work environment.
|
| https://www.printmag.com/comics-animation-design/fletcher-
| ha...
| anthk wrote:
| https://comicbookplus.com
|
| Enjoy.
| jedberg wrote:
| They stopped doing that a while ago. They realized it didn't
| matter and was more beneficial for them so they can scoop up
| more public domain and make more movies out of it.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Kids don't care about Mickey they care about Rocket Raccoon.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Yeah, I realised my children, barely a decade old, don't
| really know the cartoon characters I took for evergreen as
| a child: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Yogi Bear,
| Woody Woodpecker and Rocky & Bullwinkle. I mean they could
| probably name all of them, but don't really have an
| attachment or think they belong to a pantheon of any sorts.
|
| I assume that companies foresaw this coming and decided not
| to invest in further developing or promoting characters
| that they couldn't have exclusive merchandising rights for
| the foreseeable future. Just making money off a new movie
| isn't enough if you can't have sole rights to license the
| t-shirts and have the current children introduce it to
| their children.
| jedberg wrote:
| They aren't stuck with 6 TV channels to choose from and
| they don't have the privilege of Saturday morning
| cartoons to introduce all of them. They have curated
| experiences on streaming apps.
| joshspankit wrote:
| And yet; if those characters were public domain they
| might be alive and well in the imagination of children
| today.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I tested with my 5 years old daughter:
|
| * She knows Mikey and Minie, I was sure about that, but I
| asked her anyway what kind of animal they are. [Hi from
| Argentina. In Spanish(es-ar) it's not obvious that "Mikey
| Mouse" is a "raton".] She likes them.
|
| * Surprisingly, she knows Tom and Jerry, but she thinks
| it's a cat and _two_ mice (??). I guess my brother show
| her a few cartoons (??), and in some of them Jerry has a
| friend (??).
|
| * All the other are dead. They have been good characters.
| flobosg wrote:
| > but she thinks it's a cat and _two_ mice (??)
|
| > and in some of them Jerry has a friend (??)
|
| That's probably Nibbles:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibbles_(Tom_and_Jerry)
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's incredible the amount of damage they've done in the
| meantime. If only they can rollback the changes they, and
| their lackeys, pushed through.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >It's incredible the amount of damage they've done in the
| meantime
|
| How can you quantify this damage?
| [deleted]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > They realized it didn't matter and was more beneficial for
| them so they can scoop up more public domain and make more
| movies out of it.
|
| I don't have anything concrete to back this up, but it seems
| more likely to me that they just don't see much potential
| revenue in content from the 1920's, so they see little to be
| gained from further spending on copyright-extension lobbying.
|
| Put another way, they've already succeeded. Copyright terms
| aren't actually unending, but in profit terms (or practical
| terms more broadly) the difference is minimal.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Doesn't really make sense, as these same 20s works were the
| ones that were kept out of the public domain the first time
| around with the Copyright Term Extension Act.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Disney gets blamed a lot for this, but I don't really buy it.
| The copyright extension in '76 brought America into the same
| copyright duration as stipulated by the Berne Convention of
| 1886 (although the US would not sign on until a decade later),
| and the Sonny Bono act extended copyright length to the same as
| what had been harmonised in the EU a few years prior; Germany
| had had notoriously long copyright lengths, lasting 80 years
| past the death of the author at one point.
|
| Don't get me wrong, copyright length is certainly too long, but
| blaming Disney is rather Americentric, considering the US was
| rather late to the game on long copyright durations.
| joshspankit wrote:
| What do you say about the timing of the extensions?
| mannerheim wrote:
| For the CTEA (which is the one called the Mickey Mouse
| Act), that was only a few years after the EU copyright
| harmonisation in '93. Disney lobbied heavily for that, of
| course, and it was in their interest to do so, but it's
| likely it would have passed anyway if the EU had tied
| favourable trade deal conditions to harmonising copyright
| duration; the Senate report for the act specifically cites
| trade with the EU as a motivation.
|
| The Copyright Act of 1976 increased the duration
| specifically in order to comply with the Berne Convention
| the US would end up joining. There's not a particular
| reason for why '76, other than legislators finally decided
| the US would join what was considered the international
| standard.
|
| Both of these were more or less coincidences, in my
| opinion.
| melllvar wrote:
| Along these same lines, Tom Lehrer recently put all of his works
| (music and lyrics) into the public domain. Downloadable from his
| site [0] where there's a notice to this effect.
|
| [0]: https://tomlehrersongs.com/
| divbzero wrote:
| To put US copyright duration [1] in perspective:
|
| - If you published something and die today, it will not enter
| public domain until January 1, 2093.
|
| - If a company hires you to publish something today, it will not
| enter public domain until January 1, 2118.
|
| [1]: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
| robin_reala wrote:
| You can always choose to dedicate your work to the public
| domain via a grant like CC0.
| taink wrote:
| It is not always legal to do so; in some countries it is
| impossible to forego your copyrights. CC0 is a tool that
| allows to get as close as possible to a public domain
| dedication.
|
| See https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-
| domain/cc...
| darknavi wrote:
| Doesn't this also assume there aren't any more legal
| extensions?
| AlanSE wrote:
| Those dates will be just in time for people to read the
| earliest wave cli-fi books as they're living through it!
| dang wrote:
| Related (but we moved most comments hither):
|
| _2023 's public domain is a banger_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34071163
| a-dub wrote:
| cue science fiction plot: the robots walk among us, but there's a
| gap in their knowledge that goes back one hundred years from
| their activation dates, after the great rights wars locked down
| robot access to nearly any copyrightable human knowledge.
|
| the real ai wars end up being purely about intellectual property.
|
| society flirts with repeating history as the mistakes of the past
| are revealed to half of us from a hundred years ago, year by
| year.
| jedberg wrote:
| So in theory every streaming service could put all these movies
| on their service, right?
|
| And I could sell a box set of "top movies of 1927"?
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| In the US, yes (not willing to make a claim about IP laws in
| every country).
|
| Although I'm not sure how big the market will be as it will
| also be completely legal to share and download them on internet
| for free.
| pavlov wrote:
| Yes. But they are black-and-white and silent, which severely
| limits the audience these days.
|
| Some of these movies have circulated with more recent
| soundtracks, and those are off limits. In particular there's a
| somewhat infamous 1984 version of "Metropolis" with music
| produced by Giorgio Moroder and Freddie Mercury. That won't be
| in the public domain until 2079...
| not2b wrote:
| A streaming service could hire musicians to do a new score
| for public domain silent movies, they would then have the
| exclusive right to distribute the combined work.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Yes, yes.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-21 23:02 UTC)