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Comment by mitchellshow | Hacker News Reader

Something to note when discussing music copyrights.

The industry is much less focused on what it can gain through litigation, and much more focused on what it loses by not aggressively protecting their copyrights.

I recall a conversation with a friend who managed PR for the RIAA when they went around suing teenagers for using P2P (yeah, imagine that PR job). They knew the mess it would cause, but they had to do it, because it sent a stronger message if they did nothing. IANAL, but there's something about if you knowingly let someone use your copyright without demanding they license it from you, you give up or lose the copyright at some point? (Edit: apparently this only applies to trademarks, not copyrights)

Labels have invested a heap of cash buying these rights, we shouldn't all be shocked when they act lawfully to protect them.

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> there's something about if you knowingly let someone use your copyright without demanding they license it from you, you give up or lose the copyright at some point?

You are thinking of Trademarks. In copyrights there is no such thing, and international treaties make it unlikely there will be.

In Trademarks you have to use and defend it or it is gone. Thus companies make efforts to be seen defending their trademark: if they can show the court that they have been careful about defending their trademarks they have a stronger case when someone is genuinely infringing.

The RIAA does not lose any rights by not protecting their copyright. However they also know sending a message to kids when they are only involved in small illegal act can prevent them from getting bigger, which is consideration they need to think about.

Yeah, I think my friend was thinking of trademarks vs copyrights. I'm not arguing the lawsuits weren't a scare tactic... it was a spectacular failure of a plan. But I'm not sure what else they could have done at that point, as the sky started falling.

> Labels have invested a heap of cash buying these rights

IP legislation needs to move into the 21st century where we have digital audio workstations and word processors and non-linear editors and many other modern conveniences that have brought the cost of producing and distributing content way way down. We need to send some sort of sunset signal to the labels and comparable organizations that they should stop investing so much in lawyerifying their content because the government is going to severely limit the enforcement of their claims to particular combinations of colors and sounds.

Come to think of it, maybe the enforcement period should be proportional to the development costs. E.g., how many man-hours at minimum wage + amortized equipment costs did it take to record that song? Okay, we'll enforce your copyright for three years. Oh, you spent gajillions producing a AAA-tier video game? You get 10 years.

Trademarks are the thing you can lose if you knowingly let someone use it, not copyright. Copyright remains even if you do nothing to enforce it.

Yeah, if you own a copyright or trademark and do not defend it, and can be shown to have known about it, then it becomes almost impossible to defend later on in court. Kind of like a muscle, if you don't use it, you lose it.

This is true (to a point) with trademarks, but absolutely false with copyrights.

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