Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedunangst | Hacker News Reader

That's a peculiar way to disincentive success. Hope to be successful enough to make some royalties, but not so successful as to be traditional because then you get nothing.

View on HN

Well, I do believe that a work can become so important that it shouldn't be copyrighted anymore. The most notable example is Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which is a national artifact more important than anything in the Smithsonian. It should be freely distributable to everyone in America who wants to watch it, instead it is under enforced copyright. Perhaps the government should purchase the copyright using eminent domain in cases like this.

Woah I haven't ever considered the possibility of applying eminent domain to copyright brb mind blown.

That seems... incredibly reasonable and helpful.

(no sarcasm)

MLK could have dedicated the speech to public domain, had he so wished. Again, "if we like your speech we're going to take it" -> not a great incentive.

On the other hand, are you going to argue that the existence of copyright is what caused MLK to write said speech? In the absence of copyright, we never would have had the "I have a dream" speech?

Except Dr. King didn't write the speech. From Wikipedia:

"The speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones[17] in Riverdale, New York City. Jones has said that "the logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us" and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, [12 hours before the March] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say"."

I'm not so sure these people would appreciate the fact that you think they should work without being compensated for it, or that somehow, compensation and/or ownership isn't a good reason to do something.

I suspect the primary compensation they hoped to get for that particular speech was _not_ financial.

People who write songs and materials for Churches do it to make a living. It's actually a big problem for folks who write songs and arrangements for Church Choirs--many of their customers don't feel they should be paid! I've been to conferences at Music and Musician trade shows where this very issue is discussed.

Right, and work for hire means a writer gets paid one time to do the job, and the residuals are owned by whomever hired the person do write the speech / book / song / lyrics / tambourine solo.

Doesn't matter if it's churches or playing in jazz clubs, writing and making music for a living is a tough business. I've worked some churches that paid quite well - at least industry standard - and I could go online now on CraigsList and find 5+ requests per day asking for music volunteers because religion. In my experience, churches are simply another ill-informed group that frequently want all the benefits of live music without compensating for it. Same goes for well-meaning volunteer organizations.

> many of their customers don't feel they should be paid

This happens to physical products too, I don't see how specific individuals not wanting to pay for something has any bearing on the existence / effectiveness of copyright.

Well, firstly speech-writers normally are compensated...they're paid for their work when they do it.

Secondly, they're not the beneficiaries of the copyright: it belongs to the King estate.

The argument for Copyright is that is incentivizes people to create things (e.g. musicians to write songs).

Are you stating that without copyright no one would write speeches? Would people have just abandoned the Civil Rights movement because of a lack of copyright? That seems like an extreme view.

Actually, in US copyright law, it is possible for works to effectively lose their copyright. One of the elements of fair use (note: most jurisdictions do not have a fair use defense, so this only applies to the US) is that some things can become so important to the public interest that any reproduction is effectively fair use. The most notable use of this claim is the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination.

If you get to the point where your song is sung at every single English-speaking home at every birthday, you have effectively captured all the market. You cannot get more successful. You reached the end game, the top score, there is no more growth to be had. The oil well has dried up and the gold mine is empty. You are standing at the end of profit.

But it takes a good bit of time for something to become "traditional"; long enough that it becomes hard to figure out who, exactly, owns the copyright to what, as in this case. Limiting the term of copyright also has a function of promoting legal certainty: with relatively short terms, if there's a controversy, the court can have living witnesses and a fairly complete record, vs. a few strands of unconclusive evidence like here.

I think strangely, we are not hearing so much about the original inventors from the 20's, we should ask them what they think about that.

Have you read the Constitution recently?

> 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.

The whole point of the system is to encourage products that are successful enough to make some royalties and then become public domain.

Well, you still get the satisfaction of creating a deeply ingrained cultural phenomenon.

No, you're successful enough to make some money, not necessarily a huge amount.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com