And yet Hollywood keeps buying the legislators and perpetuates this broken system.
Basically: The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. Doesn't matter if that work is entirely "intellectual" or not. The fact that it's physically easy to steal intellectual property does not make it right.
People who make arguments about natural rights typically also think that if people's natural rights are not respected, that is going to ultimately be a net loss for society. I agree with that in the case of intellectual property. If people's intellectual property rights are not respected, it will not be profitable to develop intellectual property.
Although we shouldn't shun abstractions, it's also important not to shun concretes. In this case: you claim that it's important for the public good to move works into the public domain. Well, how is it good for the public to move Horton Hears a Who or Sports Illustrated into the public domain? Much less Waiting for Godot.
Society will grant you a reasonable amount of time to make money off your work with legal protection. After that time's up, your work belongs to society.
Seems like a fair economic exchange to me.
As far as I know, it's been good for everyone that Shakespeare's works are in the public domain.
In the absence of copyright the author would have no protection what so ever and would be at mercy of society at large. With copyright they gain protection from the public domain which we, the public, give them in exchange for the cultural creations this protection entices.
If they in exchange of this protection returns nothing to society (i.e. infinite retro-active copyright extensions), then we as a society should have no reason to provide this protection for them.
Basically Disney was able to build an empire on works found in the public domain, but they refuse to give the same opportunity for others to do the same. That is also very one-sided and society as a whole gains very little cultural capital and is forced to pay (again and again) for what they have generously provided protection for.
Make no mistake of it: If copyright law is one-sided, it is to the creators' and media-conglomerates benefit and not society.
Society isn't owed anything. Government (which is distinct from society) protects IP, not because they benefit from it or society maximizes utility from it, but because that is what justice is about. This isn't a free service; the authors pay taxes for (among others) the legal system that protects their rights and enforces their contracts.
I think private contracts would be sufficient. The author doesn't yield his work to a publisher without terms; for the publisher to pretend it is in the public domain (e.g. to start distributing copies without royalties to the author) would violate a contract. The same could apply to end-users; without any explicit copyright protection, you could be required to sign a contract as a condition of purchasing a book, agreeing not to reprint/redistribute. I don't see that the essential parts of copyright protection add anything fundamental; enforcing IP can be reduced to upholding a contract. It's not artificial.
This argument is only considering one side of the equation. The other side:
Pretty much all products of a human being's work in a civilized society are built on top of previous products of other people's works, in both a material and especially in an intellectual sense.
Giving such an unreasonably long time for copyright protection is breaking the chain. It argues, wrongly, that it is ok to build on the previous products of civilization while effectively locking up anyone from building on yours for 100-200 years.
Separately:
There's a legitimate discourse to be had about how long copyright protection should last. But I disagree totally with people who claim that it should be nonexistant.
If a work is out of print and not findable, and the copyright holder is gone, how would you know that the work existed, and how would anybody go about printing said work again?
I also think that your statement implies that society is somehow entitled to peoples' copy written works at some point. I think it might be the prerogative of the copyright holder to discontinue (and possibly destroy) his or her work before the copyright's lifetime ended. What then?
Also, 'out of print' is not 'not findable'. When Google created their Google Books system they encountered many books they wanted to scan whose copyright holders could not be located. The same is true for many old video games: many people remember playing games in their childhood that would now only be available if someone posted a ROM because the original game cartridges or consoles are difficult to come by. However, because the copyright holder cannot be found, there can be no legal means to distribute said games for many decades.
I was surmising a scenario where one did not exist to point out an issue with the parent post. Of course this situation would almost never occur in reality.
An argument for natural rights is totally independent of the government of any particular country. If the U.S. Constitution has it wrong (which it may), that's what amendments are for.
But Copyright as law is only about 300 years old and wasn't implemented because of "natural rights".
> If people's intellectual property rights are not respected, it will not be profitable to develop intellectual property.
And, yet, a lack of copyright didn't appear to stop people from creating works before copyright existed. And maybe there's more important things for a culture than profit.
Even more so, there are people creating works today who go out of their way to specifically disclaim copyright protection using Creative Commons Zero and similar licenses. So copyright isn't a requirement for creation.
> In this case: you claim that it's important for the public good to move works into the public domain. Well, how is it good for the public to move Horton Hears a Who or Sports Illustrated into the public domain?
Well, in some cases, because that was the agreement at the time the work was created until the law retroactively changed the terms of the contract.
And in other cases, because then the next generation of film-makers gets to make their animated re-interpretation of Horton Hears a Who (or even Horton Hears a Sports Illustrated) without it being illegal or financially prohibitive thus ensuring society more culture works.
Well. In those days "copying" wasnt all that easy either
People adapted and built upon other people's music, art and technology.
For physical goods "you can't take it away from me" always goes with "you can't have it"; I would say that "rightfully his property" here can only mean the first half of that (and so cannot entirely apply to information, where the two parts are distinct). If it meant the second half it would lead to absurdities where third parties can forbid things that have absolutely no effect on them, for example how resaraunts always have to make up their own birthday songs or how playing the radio at works can lead to fines...
Lessig didn't ignore it, he overruled it.
It is. But a product of a human being's work could be ALSO my property when I bought it. Of course there is some restrictions of the right that society gives me with this property to make possible for the authors to earn a living, but this restrictions should be limited in time, and this time reasonable, like patents 20-25 years. It is not for the majority of the people of any country, just ask them. In a real democracy people create the laws, not the right holders(who are mainly publishing companies, not authors).
"Well, how is it good for the public to move Horton Hears a Who or Sports Illustrated into the public domain? Much less Waiting for Godot."
It is good for the public to have films that are masterpieces like Charles Chaplin's, or Orson Welles's, the kind of genius that are atemporal.
Isn't important that works of Stefan Zweig, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Auguste Rodin, Richard Strauss, Richard Feynnman, Isaac Asimov and hundreds of others authors from different disciplines are not going to be public domain in our entire life because the American congress continue extending copyright indefinitely as the lobbies order?
Given the money that Disney is making, I would not be surprised if the copyright law gets extended again to "life + 100". This (modifying the law to benefit 1 corporation) is simply WRONG.
Doesn't that presuppose that the incremental gain from adding another N years of copyright coverage after an author's death is greater than the potential gain if it was accessible now to people who are making their living or--even--simply living?
It's not unreasonable to assume that an extremely large proportion of creators (who are only a small--but potentially growing--portion of society) will gain no real benefit from their works being covered by copyright for 70-100 years after their death but are negatively affected by everyone else's creations being covered in the same way.
It's not just a question of profit--it's also a question of culture. What wonderful and ground-breaking reinterpretations of culture from the 20th Century are never created--or illegal--because of current copyright law?
Ignoring the impact of author death still doesn't change my original question of whether a longer term "significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property" and society in general.
Consider this latest case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8497433.stm
Having listened to both the songs, I can honestly say they are nothing alike. And yet Men At Work got sued some 20 years later for "infringement".
"[Congress shall have the power] to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Further, from Fox Film v. Doyal (again, emphasis mine):
"The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."
Copyright terms come down to a simple metric: if the public would benefit more from a work being in the public domain, the work shouldn't be copyright (insofar that the progress of science and innovation is not stifled). Corporations and anyone making a living off intellectual property have nothing to do with it; copyright exist only for the benefit of the general public. And with some of the most innovative systems software of the last decade being developed for free, you're going to have a hard time arguing that such lengthy copyright terms are needed to ensure that innovation happens. Linux is billion dollar project that happened organically; I just don't buy it that ~100 year copyright terms are necessary.
No, there really isn't: it makes no sense when you examine it.
Normal property manages a limited resource -- material things. By restricting one person's access to something it ensures access for someone else. IP is fundamentally different: it imposes a restriction where there is none, essentially, needed. Everyone can make copies of something without anyone else losing access to it.
Why impose a restriction on a useful abundance? Is there some deep virtue in denying ourselves some benefit?
> The fact that it's physically easy to steal intellectual property does not make it right.
But this is really the crux. It is exactly this difference that makes all the difference. If I could steal your normal, material, property, but leave it all in your possession, what is there to complain about? In fact, you could copy my property, then we would both have two lots of stuff -- this is not bad, this is good!
And people are saying there is a 'natural right' here -- a 'natural right' to stop us from benefiting, costlessly, from each other? It is crazy.
You could say that, pragmatically, the best way to fund production is by copyright-like restrictions. That is a reasonable proposition at least. But it is no longer anything to do with 'natural rights': it is not based on any fundamental necessity or desire, it is purely contingent and economic, proven by practicality and evidence.
Could offer some examples of "building upon" others' works which are not allowed without permission under current copyright law? I would like to understand what we as a society might be missing out on.
More generally, I become concerned when I hear "public interest" arguments because they usually apply a relatively static analysis of benefit rather than a dynamic economic model. It might be deemed in the public interest for pizza parlors to be forced by law to provide free pizzas. In the short term, we can imagine all the happiness these pizzas would provide. However, in the slightly longer term, it is obvious that there would be no pizza parlors at all. How does one show that limiting copyright would not have the longer-term effect of fewer works being created?
An example could be a fan-made translation of old works. Mashups. Redubbing of movies. Free recordings of music.
If the "nerds" came out in the same numbers and loudness of the Tea Party, I'm sure you'd see more attention paid by politicians to the issues we love to debate here on HN.
Many politicians are just as interested in keeping their job as they are in taking lobbyist money.