Without short copyright terms and the encouragement of independent archivalists, we ensure most cultural artifacts will be lost to time.
Include a mechanism that allows encryption keys to be held in escrow, to be released publicly for all drm schemes the work is released on.
The LoC may or may not be the best avenue for such a scheme, but it should be funded by the rights holder as a condition of the protected term (or maybe for an extension beyond a base term of ~12years ala patents).
Depositing a copy of a book to the LoC is already the (dated) default behavior for hard-copy published text. Even if it's not strictly required, it mostly works.
But as I said, perhaps you get a base 12 years protection just by publishing (the status quo, but shorter base term), and only register the source/ archive if protection beyond that is financially worthwhile.
DRM content that wants DMCA type protection (hopefully a more reasonably thought out protection) requires a single tested key in escrow per protected work, or doesn't get any circumvention or takedown protection.
The exact mechanisms and terms would need to be tweaked by format and maybe even market, but the idea is to create underlying aligned incentives, without unduly burdening casual creators who might not wish to opt-in.
> Without short copyright terms and the encouragement of independent archivalists, we ensure most cultural artifacts will be lost to time.
Firstly, copyright doesn't have anything do with the problem outlined in the OP, that 75% of "golden age" silent movies have been lost. The reason it identifies is that these films were "few, fragile, flammable" and that "almost no one thought they were worth saving." Copies weren't going to magically appear: if they were fragile, expensive to produce, and viewed as ephemeral nothing short of some kind of expensive government mandate would have led to much higher preservation rates. Such a mandate would not happen unless there was a contemporary interest in preservation, which there wasn't.
Secondly, running an archive isn't free. Short copyright terms might actually lead to less preservation, since that would make the creator be even less motivated to preserve the work for the long term. I'm not sure what you mean by "independent archivalists," but if it's data hoarders (individuals or collectively) that's not really going to cut it. The data on someone's hard drive array is very unlikely live past its owner, it will be almost certainly junked by the heirs to the estate. Preservation really requires an institution.
Yet archives have very high public value. We've recognized that since the formation of the library of congress.
The issue I think we have is we already have a system mandated to archive copyrighted material, yet it's not been advanced to accommodate the digital era and there's no mandate that IP holders aid it in retention.
I think increasing public spending so the likes of archive.org can continue to function would be a net good for society.
Sure but it will probably lead to the same thing happening again.
> Sure but it will probably lead to the same thing happening again.
No. The "same thing" is was people didn't preserve things that other people now wish were saved... but only just barely. No one here actually aching to see the lost silent flim "The Devil Dancer" or would watch it if they could, they're just reacting to a statistic. Here's another statistic 99.9999...% of everything ever said has been lost. None of that has anything to do with copyright, and eliminating copyright would hardly change a thing.
Google tried to archive every book in existence, and was stopped by copyright. In our lifetimes copyright has prevented preservation. The whole effort of google books was shut down half way through. Who knows what they would have preserved if they continued.
Your suggestion that no one here really wants to see these films is irrelevant. Someone studying film might want to learn how film techniques progressed. Someone studying technology might want to learn how certain effects were achieved. Someone studying sociology might want to learn how social messages have evolved (or stayed the same) over the years. Lots of information will have been lost with these films.
Punishing and discouraging copying will certainly help ensure that fewer copies survive. Discs will rot, licenses will change hands, and the few copies that survive will dwindle and vanish.
If the corporation who owns the original IP, abandoned it for 10+ years with no way of legitimately buying it from them, then it means they don't want our money and they don't care about it, so it's fair game.
I'm doing my part.
Also "sadly" because it's not exactly a dependable process -- we're depending on people to spontaneously choose to preserve / share media widely enough there will be decent copies when/if they go out of "legitimate" circulation.
It'd be better if archiving & preserving copies were a mandatory step to being awarded copyright protection. (Which would not displace filesharing, of course...)
So they're raking in cash from rent seeking really. It would be healthier for music if what you said was true though.
I actually have quite a large, somewhat curated digital music library and, with a few hundred dollars and a few days of effort, I could probably patch any particular holes I have among songs/albums I especially enjoy, but mostly I use streaming including a lot of curated playlists.
The music wasn't lost. It just became harder to pirate.
Not looking to out any underground trackers, but am curious as someone who wasn't ever on what.cd and hasn't ever replaced long "hiatus" then gone waffles.
Does any active and/or extensive site survive?
To be fair i'm out of the piracy game when it comes to music though since spotify is more convenient to use
Even if you keep some music, you lose useful history, playlists, etc. on a whim.
Even with the new YouTube music, songs I own, and added to a playlist last week are suddenly grayed out without explanation or ability to see details. Only right click option is to remove.
been getting my Prog-Rock-Fusion fix from there, they have a lot of stuff
When one group is taking ships and killing every living thing on it then illegally selling the cargo and personal effects of the occupants, and another group is taking ships and dropping the occupants off at a POW camp then sending it to the admiralty to be legally sold, the latter is not doing the same kind of robbery. Arguably they aren't doing any kind of robbery at all.
Piracy is a violent crime, file sharing is not comparable to it in any way.
AFAICT the actual scene prefers terns like "release group", because it's indeed what they do: release bits from the confines of DRM or dead trees.
> Piracy is a violent crime, file sharing is not comparable to it in any way.
Sorry, the meaning of "pirate" you dislike is already firmly established, and you're frankly not going to be able to change that.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pirate
> 2: to take or appropriate by piracy: such as
> a: to reproduce without authorization especially in infringement of copyright
Who's this "we"?
> It's quite simply offensive to compare the copying of bits to high seas piracy which includes murder and rape.
You are talking that way, way too seriously and interpreting it in weird way in order to take maximum offense.
And my point is it isn't a comparison: "pirate" has an established meaning that is literally just your "file sharing enthusiasts." Also, actual high-seas piracy has diminished to the point where "pirates" is mainly understood as file-sharing pirates or as goofy cartoon characters (e.g. "talk like a pirate day" and "Pirates of the Caribbean"). You have do to a lot of deliberate work to strain to take offense at the association.
> Of course the copyright monopolists had to spin up such propaganda: copyright infringement just has no weight to it.
It should be noted your alternative "file sharing enthusiasts" is at least as propagandistic, just from the opposite party.
Not that I think copyright piracy is that big if a deal, it's just that computer geeks' overwrought stridency on the issue is obnoxious and obscures more than it informs.
People such as myself and the person you replied to.
> You are talking that way, way too seriously
I am. It is a serious matter.
> interpreting it in weird way in order to take maximum offense
Yes, I take maximum offense when some monopolist tries to compare me to rapers and pillagers because I copied bits.
> You have do to a lot of deliberate work to strain to take offense at the association.
Not at all. Actual piracy is still happening even today in the 21st century. Everyone knows exactly what a pirate is and it's exactly what comes to mind when someone mentions them. It's not some forgotten history only geeks know about. People will even mentally picture those very same "file sharing enthusiasts" you mention as roguish types when in fact perfectly normal people forwarding pictures, videos and documents on WhatsApp are a perfect fit for the definition. People literally infringe copyright every day at massive scales without even realizing it. They infringe copyright when they save a picture from a web site.
> It should be noted your alternative "file sharing enthusiasts" is at least as propagandistic, just from the opposite party.
Except I didn't use those terms. I used the proper one: copyright infringement. Sounds like a whole lot of nothing when put that way, doesn't it?
> it's just that computer geeks' overwrought stridency on the issue is obnoxious and obscures more than it informs.
So the copyright industry insists on using propaganda words like "piracy" purely to add weight to copyright infringement and make it seem more real than it really is but I'm the one obscuring the issue? Right.
> piracy noun [ U ] UK /ˈpaɪərəsi/ US
> IT, LAW
> the act of illegally copying computer programs, recordings, films, etc. to sell them at much cheaper prices
What's interesting is that this definition includes selling.
So by this definition at least, regular file sharing of copyrighted media, even illegal or infringing distribution, would not qualify as piracy, since no sale is involved.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/piracy
Not too hard to find, but a beautiful animation of a human struggling yo walk home on the moon… you’ll love it
We maintain a central list [1] of content that various members have archived, so that when content is removed from YouTube, people can direct inquiries to contributors who have archived that content.
It's a small way to keep track of what things have been successfully archived, and sometimes direct efforts to preserve specific content.
The (grand)parent comment didn't talk about any of that.
>This is what today's IP oligopolists would have happen to the bulk of culture
You could tape over the air stuff though.
More than that, IP is anti-property in nature, because it restricts you from using your real property, you can't use your printing press to print a book that you like.
I know that there's an argument to be made about authors wanting to eat, but that's a separate issue, it doesn't change the fact that IP is logically inconsistent and the "property" part is misleading.
now IP is a confusing form of governance because all the contradictions mentioned by gran parent comment while being named "property" and because it's being applied to something that is not a resource which means it does not even need governance in first place
IP makes sense to me - you are assigning ownership of purely human created constructs, and someone assigning me Mickey Mouse doesn't use up a resource and prevent you from making your own IP.
But physical property... you're telling me that someone ('someone' being a government - who probably took it by force from some other group of people) can just "assign" me something no human had a hand in creating, I can morph it, then sell it to some other person for a buck? The whole chain of custody is tainted. I should not be able to "own" these things no human created, at best, I should be able to rent it from
IP does not have that property.
In that owning a patent doesn't even give you the right to make the invention described, it only allows you to prevent others from making it.
Especially true if you patent an improvement of someone else's patented invention.
Your patent isn't license to infringe on theirs.
But you can prevent them from using that improvement without having licensed your patent.
Although copyright and trademark are slightly different beasts.
Copyright lasts 70 years past the death of the author. I assure you, you will not own that chair after you die.
Your heirs may own the chair, but inheritance itself is also a legal construct. No will, and the decision is made by the probate court. No heirs? Then your chair does go to the state. Or maybe it gets left on the street to be taken by any member of the public who sees it and happens to want it.
Intellectual property in the end is really not that different from any other kind of property. Like any form of property, it's a social construct that exists because people think and act like it exists, and because the resources of the state are used to ensure that any dissenters are suppressed and/or punished.
Ultimately, the reason that your chair sits in your living room, rather than in your better-armed or more muscular neighbor's fireplace, is the same reason that you can't sell bootleg copies of the latest Disney movie on Amazon: the voluntary observation and enforcement of the law by human beings.
If inheritance didn't exist, I imagine people would achieve a similar result by gifting everything to their heirs towards the end of their life. And there would be cases where someone meant to do so but died earlier than expected, or where someone did so when they thought they were dying but then ended up living 10 years longer. Compared to that world, inheritance with wills is more convenient and orderly for everyone involved, but it is not the thing that enables people to pass things on to heirs.
The state's monopoly on violence, and the rule of law it allows, is definitely the thing that enables people to pass things on to their designated heirs. Otherwise, every dispute between heirs, every contested will, every contested end-of-life "gift" would carry the potential for bloodshed.
The specific laws that we have right now could be written differently, and things like inheritance could work differently, but you cannot escape the fact that they are all just creatures of the human mind.
That is, until those concepts begin to be encoded in and enforced by machines.
My view is that we should build a system that ensures every person gets to eat (and have shelter, medical care, other necessities) without the need to pay for it, simply because this is the right thing to do.
Then under such a system, we can eliminate intellectual property restrictions, because they will no longer be necessary to ensure that artists eat. IP restrictions actually slow down innovation, so eliminating them will have huge benefits to society.
By the way you can ensure that everyone gets fed etc without paying for it by building an economy where everyone is part owner of the productive machinery they depend upon. Then no one is poor. Creating an economy where a preponderance of the firms are cooperatives is a good start. So this can be done in a traditionally libertarian way, without high taxes or strong government intervention.
How is "I own this text" less arbitrary than "I own this forest"? You can't "own" a forest, you can only prevent other people from entering it but if the forest is large enough you can't even do so on your own, even if you live in the forest.
Heck, while you might "own" a chair, how do you "own" a million chairs? You can't use a million chairs. You can't even store a million chairs in one place. You certainly can't guard them yourself, much like the forest.
And how do you "own" a business? How do you "own" the factory when you're not even using it, nor would be able to do so yourself and instead you have to pay dozens of people to use it for you?
"Property" literally just means "exclusive claim backed up by force". That's the primary function of the state, it's why we have police.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0RXfGGMGPE
One of the arguments he brings up is that the Constitution specifically says "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It can be argued that IP law does not do this. In fact it does the opposite. As soon as you have a patent or copyright on something you are incentivized to not promote the progress of science and arts, at least not until your monopoly terms expire (which is never, with the copyright extensions).
The staffer who wrote that was fired.
[1] https://archive.org/details/RscThreeMythsAboutCopyrightLaw/
If I make a thing, and am actively providing it for consumption, I have an interest in maintaining its integrity.
Contrarily, if I have made something, but it’s just sitting idling away as something I simply own as an IP, it will be allowed to languish, in every sense of the word.
There are similar concepts with trademarks; if you don’t actively defend trademark usages, you stand the risk of losing it to the public domain.
Likewise, if you don’t actually provide your creation to the public in a consumable way, you should lose the ability to claim it.
https://collider.com/final-space-pulled-from-streaming/
Of course in this case it's still possible the studio retains original copies in its archives but according to the article, the write-off means the show can not be re-released so those copies literally have no value to the IP owners and might be destroyed, too.
Things from the 80s are permanently lost simply because no one bothered to preserve copies of them.
I live in a small country with a weird language, that was one a part of a larger country with a few other weird languages and a lot of good music.
A bunch of that music is lost forever now... some newer artists still play the old songs, but there are no recorded originals. For some songs you can only find shitty quality recordings on youtube when someone recorded an audio tape to a youtube video at shitty quality and split into 10minute chunks. Original recording studios don't exist anymore, CDs maybe existed, maybe not, tapes surely did, but those degraded a lot, modern streaming has made piracy hard, since there are not a lot of listeners who would rip that, and youtube only has that song in a video format, with a video intro, and a silent part in between to make the video make sense (unlike a radio edit). And even if people somehow downloaded and stored that music, how am I supposed to get it too? Torrenting is hard for many people, services like kazaa don't exist anymore, existing torrent sites close down, zero seeders on what's left over and even less ways to actually find it online.
Yeah, sure, all that music could fit on a single modern hard drive, but nobody put it there and made it available for others, and in turn, it is lost, either fully (noone has the HQ original anymore) or partially (some people have it, for now, but others are unable to obtain it).
I'd much prefer some national archive taking those recordings (music, videos, books, etc.), digitizing them (or preferably starting with a digital version) and then offer it for download after some reasonable amount of time (which would be way shorter than death+70 years). A good indicator for 'when' would be the availability of the media... Am I unable to buy it in a reasonable way for a reasonable price? Ok, it's protected. Noone is selling it anymore, or not selling it in my country (even digitally)... the author/publshed obviously doesn't want my money, so why complain if it's on offer for free.
TLDR: think of your favourite non-mainstream band from 20 years ago and try to download their songs.. good luck with that.
Btw if you don’t know them there is a amazing documentary from fat possum about their work on YouTube.
1. Keep buying new things.
2. Pay through the nose for rare old cultural artifacts.
Meanwhile copyright protection is required to encourage creative people to make things
(Imagination in service to neoliberal capitalism - it's a real world _Hyperion_ novel, forums like this mind-jack you with arcane symbols into miniscule wiggles in the GHz range, roughly 1500*8 bytes of them at a time, pushed through a radio, into the kernel, into a program, and spat out into an array of glowing quantum effects... But still, even here, Buster Keaton is funny.)
Anybody, yes ANYBODY based in reality knew that essentially all "piracy" took place in dorm rooms and bedrooms on double-cassette boom boxes... FAR from "perfect" copies. People who could afford DAT recorders were not going to be sapping record-company profits.
And we all know what happened next: The "perfect digital copies" lie was further debunked with the ascendancy of MP3... another lossy and imperfect reproduction.