Posted on 11/18/2014 2:24:35 PM PST by reaganaut1
The idea behind copyright was simple – creativity would be catalyzed if individuals were given the exclusive right to profit from their works for a period of time. The law was supposed to strike a sensible balance between financial incentives for creators and social benefits.
Early on, that may have been the case, but the law has changed greatly since the first Copyright Act was passed in 1790. Today, copyright does far more to create an information oligarchy than the robust information democracy the drafters of the Constitution and the first act had in mind.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
You may notice I implicitly supported laws on the model of the Law of Queen Anne and the Statute on Monopolies of 1662 in my post.
But there is another state, not shown on your continuum: Bad (including draconian) laws favored by rent-seeking elites and upheld by courts and cemented by international treaties. And it is this state in which copyright and patent law currently rests.
You seem to have forgotten that courts can be suborned by commercial interests.
There is an argument to be made that the use of state power to prop up business models that depend on artificial scarcity is a bad thing, but the main problem is not culture locked up behind a paywall, but culture and science not being done because some "rightholder" won't allow the production of derivative works.
The suppression of The Wind Done Gone, a retelling of the story of Gone with the Wind from a slave's perspective, by the estate of Margaret Mitchell; the delay in the American release of the track "Fire and Ice" by Unto Ashes, using the lyrics of the 1928 Robert Frost poem of the same title as lyrics due to wangling with the decades-dead poet's publisher over the rights; the impossibility of publishing fan-fiction because copyright now extends to characters and settings, not just the actual text as it originally did; and patent trolling are all signs that there is something deeply wrong with the reification of the government-granted monopolies of copyright and patent as "property" in terms of their Constitutional purpose.
The nature of human creations and the marketplace could stand refinement. I have no problem with Disney and affiliates retaining rights to “Mickey Mouse” in perpetuity. Others ought to be allowed to make use of Mickey without asking for cash. I do have a problem with mathematicians charging a fee for use of their creations/formulas, but believe their published works ought to be subject to remuneration indefinitely.
What you call “grind to a halt” would make for a good fantasy. Stop whining and write a novel about it. Copyright law merely regulates ideas as they are brought to market. The onus of enforcement is a two way street. Walt won’t come to your home and sue if your lady sews up a Mickey Mouse pillow for your weary head and charges you $5.00 and a night out for the effort.
What I hear from the detractors of copyright law is a thin whine called “That’s not fair!” There isn’t a fiddle small enough to express my sympathy.
Do you take the same view on patents? Should all life-saving drugs be locked up in government-granted monopolies in perpetuity? Really?
As I asked, before how much extra should we all be paying for our cars for the perpetual royalties to the estate of Nikolaus Otto? How about Charles Goodyear? Gaston Planté?
Or do you have some argument that a fictional character is more worthy of being the subject of a perpetual government monopoly than the internal combustion engine, vulcanized rubber, or the lead-acid battery? If so why?
And how robust a notion of fair-use are you allowing in your notion of perpetual remuneration? If your regime were in place, would I have to pay the estate of William Butler Yeats for reusing the line “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” in a published work, or only if I quoted the whole poem “The Second Coming”?
And why do you have a problem with us mathematicians charging to use our discoveries? How are they different than a device that can be patented or a fictional character that can be copyrighted? Why exactly shouldn’t our “intellectual property” be subject to the same kind of protection? I put more creative effort into the development of the infinitesimal deformation theory for pasting diagrams of linear categories than old Walt put into “Steamboat Willie”. Why exactly do you think I should not be able to charge people to use the results in my two papers on the subject and prevent them from being used if they don’t pay, but Disney Corporation should be able to do the same for their cartoon mouse?
The subject is copyrights, not patents. You make a mockery of the nature and intent of copyright law which simply prohibits your use of other’s inventions to MAKE MONEY FOR YOURSELF. Use it to your heart’s content. But don’t profit from it unless you share those profits (usually in a small percentage) with the creator.
And your argument for giving less protection to the creative efforts of inventors or mathematicians than to those of authors and artists is what? Your principle of not making a profit without sharing it with the original creator seems very broad. How are you limiting it to art, and excluding mathematics and technology?
If someone makes a profit by applying a mathematical theorem, why do you claim the mathematician who first proved it shouldn’t get a cut, but if someone makes a profit by showing a new Mickey Mouse cartoon, Disney Corp. needs to be paid?
It is also does not support the current state of copyright law: “with the creator” doesn’t cover, for instance, Henry Holt and Co. demanding royalties for the work of a decades-dead poet for use of his work as song lyrics, or even Mickey Mouse — Walt Disney is dead, he can’t get a share of the profits from the new, very funny, Mickey Mouse movie — and DMCA take-down notices affect folks who aren’t trying to make a dime from their remix of corporately held art.
The subject is copyright law. I’ve made no assertions regarding patent law. I’ve also not argued for less protection, but for more, where authors and artists have created something people are willing to pay for. If it is a marketable entity, then there is no reason the inventor or his legally assigned progeny should not benefit indefinitely as we see fit to prescribe. Free markets and freedom. The market will decide what is worthy of protection or not. Copyright law gives decent enough latitude to those who want to make use of material others have created. What’s your beef?
I also note you ignored the last two paragraphs of my post, which were specific to copyright.
Henry Holt and Co., Walt Disney - at some point they legally ceded ownership of their creative efforts to other entities. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with copyright law supporting that. Are you jealous because you don’t get a piece of the pie? Invent your own mouse and bring it to market.
What’s your beef? You disagree with the Founders who specified authors and inventors, not authors, inventors, their estates in perpetuity and corporations to whom they alienated their rights (often for a mess of pottage), and who specified “for a limited term”.
The Founders plainly had some idea of the normal progress of science and culture in which ideas from the past are perpetually reused, and didn’t want to lock up ideas in government-granted monopolies in perpetuity, even as they recognized the utility of granting such monopolies for short periods as a spur to creativity.
Why exactly shouldn’t Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf the Grey, and Cthulhu at some point become like Robin Hood, Merlin and Polyphemus, legendary figures about whom anyone can write and sell stories? Why shouldn’t music that has become folkloric so that people sing it without remembering who wrote it eventually be free to reuse in snatches in new works of music? (I regard the Australian court decision that insisted Men at Work pay the estate of the composer of “Waltzing Matilda” royalties for the flute riff on the melody in their song “Down Under” as an affront to culture and a model for everything that’s wrong with copyright law world-wide at present.)
My beef is that I regard the way we mathematicians do things as good for mankind and a good model for the rest of the culture, the state of copyright law in 1790 as nearly optimal, the way Hollywood does things as bad for mankind and a horrible way of advancing culture, and the position you are advocating as even worse than the present state of copyright law.
No. I don’t “want a piece of the pie”. Except that you’ve decide mathematics somehow isn’t a creative endeavor, and we mathematicians should get royalties on people using our results, while authors and animators (and their estates or anyone they alienate their rights to) should get royalties on people using their character, I already have one: the only right I ceded regarding my two papers in deformation theory is the right of the journal to publish copies of the papers in perpetuity. I retained all other rights. According to your theory, if anyone makes money using my results (for instance reproducing them in a book that they sell) I should get a cut, the same way the writer, director and animator of a new Mickey Mouse cartoon are supposed to pay Disney Corp.
You still haven’t explained why the fruits of mathematicians’ creative endeavors (theorems and proofs) are not subject to the same protection as fictional characters or fictional settings.
Copyleft stands on copyright. It can demand royalties of standing on your head and whistling Dixie.
The market place has not determined that mathematicians should be paid for results based on formulas they’ve created. Sorry. I have in no way decided math is not a creative endeavor, but you’ve been liberal in creating such an assumption.
And yes, if you have a published work out there in the marketplace, you should receive compensation on the basis of sales as long as you live. Unless you cede that right to another agent of your choosing.
Mathematical equations are not copyrightable, and should not be.
Copyright is not for ideas or concepts, which can be expressed in different forms; just the expression.
I appreciate what you’re saying about corporations wanting indefinite copyright.
If you think about it just a moment, the original idea of lifetime of the author plus x years “”””should”””” render that indefinite idea unworkable under the law.
Say your widow sold all her interest in your book to get a big one-time payment of say $5 million from corporation. After the x years is up, the copyright should simply expire.
This also protects such an author, when you think about it, during their lifetime, from such a corporation hiring an operative to murder the author, then start publishing the book themselves. Your estate/heirs would still own the rights. Of course, nothing can protect the author from those heirs ! lol.
“If” the system is applied correctly and not twisted, it’s basically aimed in the right direction.
Here’s a link, if you’d like, take a “yellow marker”, mark it up where you want changes, and we can all debate the changes / suggestions:
http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html
Again, this thread is about copyright (please start a new thread if you want to discuss patents, and I’ll chime in that I feel that all patents are by definition unpatentable, if you carefully consider the rules of patentability).
If I develop a software application, copyright protects me from people copying my product and competing against me in selling it.
It does not protect me from other people seeing what I’ve done, writing their own appliction from scratch, that has a different look and feel, but has the same functionality. If the functionality requires the developer to devise a sophisticated algorithm, the competitor needs to figure that out on their own and write it from scratch for their competing software.
Each market participant working on their own is competition; when market participants simply take the executable software of others and sell it as their own, they’ve stolen.
Same rule as if I made a fantastically beautiful sculpture: don’t caste a mold of my work and resell copies - make your own sculpture from scratch - even if it’s the same figure. Then, if you want to mass market your sculpture, have at it. Just don’t mass market my sculpture.
I’m very curious to see your “markup” on those copyright rules.
IMHO, there should be a difference between a commercial concern copyrighting works and an individual.
Most things don’t need long protection, but there is great value in copyrighting movies, popular fiction books and TV shows.
There should be a set time frame for general copyright. If I as a photographer want to copyright my work, I get some set period of time for a reasonable fee with an opportunity to renew. If the work is valuable enough to renew, the renewal fee is very high.
If a movie production company wants to copyright their movie in perpetuity, they can pay a percentage of the production cost. It would make sense for the producers of The Hobbit to pay 1 or 2 percent of the production cost for permanent copyright protection, even though it would be several million dollars.
Copyright exists at the moment you finish your product, without registration.
When developing software on Linux, as with any other OS, one must link one’s application with OS-provided libraries in order to `use the screen, write files, etc.
This linking can be to either “shared” libraries, so the application will not contain library executable code, just references to the libraries, or...
it can be done “statically”, where library executable code is copied from static copies of the libraries and included in the application executable.
One must take care to link “shared” when developing commercial software, because the “free software” folks will say you must include all your source code with your application (that you then will attempt to sell for money, but once the source is public, fat chance on that).
They say that when you statically link, your inclusion of system executable library code in your application makes it a derivative work, and thus subject to GPL’s open source requirement.
Now... if the moment I finish my last compile, and my application is done, I have a copyright in the product I created.
If I used Apple or M$ or one of many other OS’s, that would be clear.
But if I was using an open source OS, and I linked static - my copyright in my just finished work sits in conflict with the terms of my licensing of the open source OS.
Business law 101 tells us that:
If you and I sign a contract with each other, but that contract has provisions which conflict with then current statutes, the contract is null and void, unless it has an applicable severability clause, in which case only the conflicting clauses are null and void, and the rest of the contract would stand.
Not if the professor is even marginally competent it doesn't. The default rule is that a party to a commercial (as opposed to consumer) contract may waive their statutory rights unless the statute specifically forbids waiver.
Nor has the marketplace determined that Disney Corp. should be paid in perpetuity, nor even down to the present time, for all derivative works based on the character in “Steamboat Willie”. The latter was decided by political intervention in the marketplace, by passage of a law contrary to the plain spirit of the Constitutional clause granting power to Congress to grant copyrights.
And, the perpetual, inheritable, alienable copyright you advocate cannot be done by the marketplace, but only by state power enforcing a monopoly on behalf of the rightsholder, an exercise of state power, which in the American context is unconstitutional, since Congress is not granted the power to grant exclusive rights to authors and inventors in perpetuity, but only for a limited term.
The creator should have a monopoly on his work, within reason. If he chooses to cede that monopoly to some other power or entity, so be it. Let him use the law as he sees fit. This is one area where paradise will not issue forth. There is nothing unfair in allowing Disney and his agents use of the law to maintain profits from the creative efforts of Mr. Disney for an indefinite period of time, or to be extended as they might argue in court. People who want to make money off of Mickey Mouse can either shove off, pay royalties, or act under the radar with some risk.
General shrinkwrap license.
The person who does not like the royalty required can always decline to use the product. That is how copyleft can and does work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.