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Comment by praptak | Hacker News Reader

Retroactive copyright extensions are changing the deal after it has been made, for the benefit of copyright holders and to the detriment of the public. This is unethical.

That's why I get angry when copyright holders try to make ethical arguments against piracy.

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> Retroactive copyright extensions

It is kind of amazing how IP holders could pull this off. One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

That foundation isn't particularly strong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

This is only a foundation in US law and even then only for criminal law.

Not only US. There are many other countries that forbid retroactive laws.

Money fuels politics (especially in the USA) and the media companies had money to spend. The average joe didn't care, so it was a perfect storm. That's less so nowadays, but mostly because even the companies are finding it hard to get bipartisan support for these kinds of things anymore.

> One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

This is a common misconception, at least regarding laws in the US. While I may not agree with it, the US Supreme Court has for literally centuries (like since 1798) explicitly allowed all types of retroactive laws. Most importantly, the USSC has long held the prohibition against ex post facto laws only applies to criminal, not civil laws. (As an aside, this also shows what bullshit it is when justices say they are just "calling balls and strikes". Justices, of all political stripes, make up laws all the time. The Constitution, as written, very clearly and plainly says "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." At some point - Calder v. Bull in 1798 to be exact - the Supreme Court decided it only applies to criminal law.)

Good info: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/sec... and https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/219/140/

In Mexico you cannot have that, as the constitution says that no right that you had can be taken from you retroactively.

The problem is the Mexico is the most strict country (by law) in copyright terms, which is dead of last author plus 150 years and there is no fair use.

When your property is representative of so many as Disney’s are due to shared exposure, it is hard to defend centralized control.

Can you elaborate?

You have a deal with a copyright holder? Have you considered taking them to court over it? I'd donate to help get you what their contract owes you, and I'm sure others would, too.

The deal that society has is that "we follow the law and they follow the law".

Not "we follow the law and they have it changed so that we have to do whatever they want".

The law is the will of ”we”. ”They” can’t change the law – only ”we” can.

I'm not sure this is actually true anywhere but Switzerland.

Interestingly, it was true in Gaddafi's Libya as well.

Due to gerrymandering, the electoral college, weak campaign finance laws, etc. that's not the case in the United States.

What does the electoral college have to do with legislation? Sounds like you’re just regurgitating a sound bite to me

President can veto laws. President has the bully pulpit and gets things on and off the agenda. Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in.

I'm not endorsing GP's point, but the electoral college is massively important to legislation.

> Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in.

I see this repeated often, and I need to say it's bullshit.

The rules of presidential elections are known to the general public, which affects voters behavior, i.e. Republican voters in California might not even bother voting, since they stand no chance of affecting the results. Similar thing can be said about Democrats in Florida. There are even names for this: "blue states", "red states", "swing states".

Until you actually hold the elections with different rules the claim of "winning the popular vote" is meaningless.

EDIT: to clarify - the current system means that some votes matter more than others: a single Republican vote in a swing state matters more than a single Republican vote in blue state. People behave accordingly, i.e. voter turnout is higher in swing states.

That's a reasonable point, but I don't think that changes the underlying issue: some votes count more than others.

>I see this repeated often, and I need to say it's bullshit.

It's an objective truth. You can qualify it if you like.

The electoral college determines who becomes president and the president has the overt power to veto bills and the more subtle ability to influence the government's agenda.

The number of electoral votes a state has is also equal to the number of representatives that they send to congress. So the unbalanced distribution of electors also reflects an unbalanced distribution of representatives.

I think this is one of those cases where representative democracy diverges from democracy proper.

I doubt most people (who lack a financial incentive, unlike some politicians) will incline towards copyright extensions for companies.

And yet poor people constantly vote for tax cuts for rich people.

Is that true? One's options are limited if all one can do is vote for representatives, instead of directly voting on an issue themselves.

It's helpful to distinguish between the side-effects coming from one's vote and the intention/motivation for that vote. (This is called the doctrine of double effect.)

I would be surprised if many poor people vote with the intention of giving tax cuts for rich people, instead of voting for a candidate who they feel resonates them for other reasons, where it is an incidental fact that this candidate will push tax cuts for rich people.

This is true and I was being a bit snarky, but let us not forget the story of "Joe the plumber"

I believe op is referring to the deal between the copyright holder and the public - the public grants exclusive use of the content to encourage creativity, in exchange, the work will eventually become public. In extending the duration a work is protected, the deal is being modified.

And I was referring to OP having no such deal.

You only have a very weak negotiating power and only during the election campaign while copyright holders have very, very strong negotiation power (money) all the time. So they can change the law whenever and however they want to. Your "contract" with the lawmakers can change at any time regardless of your (or the majority's) wishes, which on the face of it is extremely undemocratic. So the "take them to court" strategy is doomed to fail but people are still correct to point out how unethical and immoral this is.

In the same vein, piracy may be illegal but sometimes it just balances out this immorality and lack of ethics of copyright holders and lawmakers. If we follow the same reasoning, if a pirate is not taken to court then it wasn't illegal.

This is exactly why "democracy" and "capitalism" are impossible to fully exist side by side. Capitalism rules necessarily destroy democracy because its basis is the accumulation of money and power by a few. On the other hand, perfect democracy will give people the power to remove the money privilege of the few through taxes and policies (the founding founders already knew this). The idea that we have democracy in a capitalist system is the peak of stupidity, because people are deceiving themselves about being free, when in fact they're just doing the bidding of the super rich.

So capitalism in practice compared to a perfect democracy where the powerful few handle their power without becoming corrupt? Well obviously the theoretical system wins here, but it sidesteps the biggest problem that people do not handle power well.

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