Hacker News Reader

The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society.

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.

You're correct that we build upon the previous efforts of others, but I don't think that's a counterpoint to what I've said. For one thing, copyright doesn't prevent you from building upon previous intellectual and material gains made by civilization; it just prevents you from, for example, making a movie of Lord of the Flies without permission from the owner of the copyright.

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.

But copyright can prevent you from accessing less-famous works. Some of these works are out-of-print, so you can't get them and the copyright owners are nowhere to be found. These lost copyrighted works are essentially lost.

IANAL. If a copyright holder doesn't effectively exist like in this scenario, how can they charge you with copyright infringement?

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?

Just because you can't find the copyright holder doesn't mean they don't exist. If your derived work is a big hit, some corporate lawyer somewhere might realized they acquired the rights two generations ago, and bankrupt you with an infringement suit. This is why projects go through the whole clearance-of-rights licensing nightmare, and whenever clearance fails, society loses because those projects never see the light of day.

"If a copyright holder doesn't effectively exist like in this scenario"

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.

As a practical matter, an unenforced copyright is as good as no copyright. However, if citizens routinely feel they can violate the law because it is neither enforced nor harmful to do so, the law should be rewritten to restrict it to scenarios where it is meaningful.

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.

Agreed, it's limbo really. Those who choose to 'pirate' 'abandonwares' assume the risk (however large or small) of being hit with a lawsuit. Though, I think that quantifying damages of a non-distributed copy written work might not be very easy in court, but lawyers are a crafty bunch. It seems like there's a trend to remarket old copywritten material where there's a market for it, especially with new cheap distribution models you see like with Steam or Amazon's Ebook store, for example. This could work to reduce the number of abandoned works and push them back into availability to the general public.

They can't. Only the proprietor of a copyright has standing to sue over copyright violations.

> There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property

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.

> 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

Well. In those days "copying" wasnt all that easy either

Wrong.

People adapted and built upon other people's music, art and technology.

In my naive, idealistic understanding of the spirit of copyright, it's a social contract between the artist and society.

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.

I don't see that as a "fair exchange". One side (the government) sets the terms unilaterally. There is no voluntary mutual transaction; the author doesn't consent to have his work forced into the public domain, or to the terms under which it is done.

The work is not "forced" into the public domain. It is, unilaterally, hold off from it. Without copyright (which is granted by the government) the work would be in the public domain the moment it is published/given to someone else.

>Without copyright (which is granted by the government) the work would be in the public domain the moment it is published/given to someone else.

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.

Is it actually not possible to bypass the copyright system and distribute material under contract instead? I'd imagine such an arrangement would be incredibly expensive to set up and do horribly in the market, but is there actually a legal reason you couldn't do it?

I think you could, it's just not a fail-safe system. If one judgment-proof guy breaks your contract by sharing a single copy, you have no power to stop the recipient from making all the copies they care to. Copyright is imposed on all of us, so you get more than one chance to stop infringement.

That's getting at my point. The parent seems to be implying that copyright is forced on creators at the expense of other means of protection that would be more beneficial to them. I just don't think that's the case - there's not actually anything forcing creators to copyright their work, but they do so anyways because it actually is the most appealing of the available options.

There is no voluntary mutual transaction; the author doesn't consent to have his work forced into 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.

>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.

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.

But how is that argument extended that your natural right over your work should be extended for 70 years after you die? Why should that period keep getting longer?

I don't have any specific opinion on how long it should be, as long as it's at least author's life plus some FIXNUM amount of years, to cover for the case where someone wants to invest in your work, but you might get hit by a bus tomorrow.

"There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property. It typically gets ignored (e.g. by people like Lessig)." No, it most certainly does NOT get ignored. What the proponents of change are saying is that IP rights should not be granted in perpetuity. Even patents expire after 20 years; so why not copyrights?

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.

It doesn't just benefit one corporation. It profoundly benefits one corporation, and significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property. The longer the copyright term is, the greater the value of a copyright is.

The value of a copyright isn't really part of the equation though (I know this is orthogonal to your point). From the Constitution (emphasis mine):

"[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.

> significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property.

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?

The date of an author's death has little to do with the value of her creation at the time of its creation. Copyrights are transferable. This business about death is a red herring.

Excluding work-for-hire, does a copyright transfer affect the copyright term in a way that makes the date of the original author's death no longer relevant? (IANAL and couldn't find a discussion of this when I had a quick look.)

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.

This isn't complicated. A copyright is worth more if it lasts longer. An author can sell her rights to a work for more money if copyright is going to protect that work for a longer period of time. People making a living off intellectual property can be expected to make a better living in a world in which copyrighted works have more economic value.

The stuff about death + N is an attempt to tie things to an intuition of moral rights; the business case is actually pretty poor in general. The net present values of an asset leased for (say) 30 years, versus 130 years, are surprisingly close in value, not least because of the uncertainty in predicting the future.

Why doesn't the same apply to patents too then? What makes a work of art more valuable (in terms of copyright limits) than a life-saving medicine?

That's easy: the patent covers the whole idea and precludes whole avenues of further exploration. Copyright only covers a single expression of an idea.

Then how do you explain the fact that people get sued for "lifting" just a few seconds off a track?

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".

No, I won't.

The assertion that the longer a copyright term is, the greater its value, seems dubious to me. It sounds plausible in isolation, but when you consider that every new idea builds on thousands of older ideas, longer copyright terms would seem to me to make copyrights less secure owing to challenge by antecedent rightsholders.

"Basically: The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property."

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?

> There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property.

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.

Previously compelling, no longer convincing.

Lessig didn't ignore it, he overruled it.

> The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property

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...

There is also the view that governmental implementation of natural rights has little to do with the actual principles embodied in the rights:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MfgtAAAAIAAJ&printsec=f...

That natural rights justification needs to be subordinate to the actual text of the US constitution, which makes it clear that intellectual property rights can only be granted by legislation, with limited term, and only for the purpose of stimulating progress. Without appropriate action by congress, the default under US law is for writings to be public domain, and it is unconstitutional to grant someone power over their writings simply out of the sense that they deserve it.

That natural rights justification needs to be subordinate to the actual text of the US constitution

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.

No such amendment has been passed, or even to my knowledge come close to a vote in congress. So why is it okay for congress to be acting like they have the unconditional power to hand out intellectual property rights?