Comment by loudmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by loudmax | Hacker News Reader

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The current US copyright duration is 70 years after the life of the author. This is absolutely bonkers. 50 years from publication would be a significant improvement.

50 years ago was 1975. If copyright were limited to 50 years, we'd be looking at all of the Beatles works being in the public domain. We'd be midway though Led Zeppelin, and a lot of the best work from Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones.

Also, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. Disney would still profit from the MCU films which they produced in the 2010's, but they couldn't stop you from releasing your own Batman vs Spider-Man story.

The Harry Potter books would still belong to JK Rowling, but the Narnia stories would be available for all.

The Godfather 1 and 2 would be in the public domain, as would be original Star Trek TV show, and we'd be coming up on Star Wars pretty soon.

If there were no copyright protection, these works wouldn't have been created. It is good that Paul McCartney and George Lucas and JK Rowling have profited from their creative output. It would be okay if they only profited for the first 50 years. Nobody is counting on revenue over half a century in the future when they create a work of art today.

This is our culture. It should belong to all of us.

> Disney would still profit from the MCU films which they produced in the 2010's, but they couldn't stop you from releasing your own Batman vs Spider-Man story.

Wouldn't they still have a trademark on those characters though?

The trademark on characters is related to selling goods, if the character is used as a way of identifying an authentic seller.

So, if Disney is using mickey mouse on t-shirts to identify it as a Disney manufactured t-shirt, you wouldn't be allowed to use mickey mouse on t-shirts in a similar fashion in a way that might cause consumer confusion about who manufactured the t-shirt.

If Wolverine was in the public domain, then they couldn't use a Wolverine trademark to stop you from selling a Wolverine comic book. However, if they used a _specific_ Wolverine mark to identify it as a Disney Wolverine book, then you'd be restricted from using that.

Basically, trademark exists to prevent consumer confusion about who is the creator that is selling a good.

I see, so in that hypothetical world, one could make a spider guy comic book that looks suspiciously like another, but not label it "The Amazing Spiderman (r)"?

Sounds like it would be a boon for things like fan art and fan fiction.

> If there were no copyright protection, these works wouldn't have been created.

Citation needed. You can freely copy and distribute linux and it still got made.

I think Linus Torvalds has been very explicit that he believes the GPL has been critical to the success of Linux - specifically, the copyright-enforced obligation to contribute back any modifications you make. In a world without copyright, companies would be free to make their own modifications and keep them secret, making it more or less impossible to integrate them into a cohesive whole the way they are more or less forced to do today.

GPL only forces you to contribute back a modification you make and publish.

> In a world without copyright, companies would be free to make their own modifications and keep them secret, making it more or less impossible to integrate them into a cohesive whole the way they are more or less forced to do today.

Private modifications that are never shared with a third party are fine with the GPL. Eg Google doesn't have to share whatever kernel they are using on their internal servers with you.

The things that hold modifications back from being upstreamed are getting consensus with the OSS developers and sometimes the internal legal team. Occasionally, the issue is proprietary information. Usually, it's the time commitment or upstream not being interested. What companies don't like doing is maintaining patches on a fork, and that's enough incentive to give back on its own.

If you want a point, BSD is probably a better example. Linux is protected by copyright, that's what makes copyleft licenses like GPL possible.

BSD is also protected by copyright, but it matters less for permissive licenses. It still protects attribution (so you can't claim it yours), but it probably would have worked without it, unlike with Linux that is for a big part defined by the "copyleft" protections offered by its licence.

> It still protects attribution (so you can't claim it yours), but it probably would have worked without it, [...]

Well, you could imagine a world that protects the 'moral' rights of authors like attribution, but doesn't otherwise prohibit anyone from duplicating or modifying works.

I don't know about the US but in French "droits d'auteur", moral rights are treated differently from exploitation rights. In particular, they cannot be waived, they cannot be sold, and there is no "work-for-hire". For example, even as an employee, every line of code you write will be yours until you die and nothing can change that. You may not be allowed to do anything with it (for example because the exploitation rights go to your employer), but it is still yours.

Yes, that's what I had in mind.

So something like the French system minus copyright would approximate the BSD license.

(I was thinking of Germany, which works similarly, if memory serves right. You also cannot release anything you write into the public domain by German law, though you can do legal moves that are essentially equivalent.)

Linux is generally a functional tool, and struggles with overall coherence. There are far fewer success stories of artworks being made in this style. (E.g. there are successful multiplayer open-source games or clones of existing games, but very few original single-player games, and those that there are are largely the work of a single individual)

Linux is both a kernel (which is under GPL), and an operating system, whose other components are under a variety of licenses (and you can pick and match which components you want).

That's why some people like to call it 'Gnu/Linux', but thanks to recent advances we can make Gnu-free Linuxes today, too.

> There are far fewer success stories of artworks being made in this style. (E.g. there are successful multiplayer open-source games or clones of existing games, but very few original single-player games, and those that there are are largely the work of a single individual)

Humans have made art since forever. Large collaborative efforts like eg a cathedral are a more recent invention. But by these standards copyright was practically invented yesterday.

> Linux is both a kernel (which is under GPL), and an operating system

I was talking about the kernel, though what I said applies to both.

> Humans have made art since forever.

Perhaps, but not the kind of long-form narrative experiences that we're talking about here. (Sagas and epics predate copyright, but those are a quite different form, and indeed have much the same downsides - struggles with coherence and consistency when there are multiple authors, inability to put everything together in a sensible arc).

Linux is under the GPL, which explicitly needs copyright to work.

Something like the BSD licenses approximates 'no copyright' better, perhaps? But also not completely.

Most of the classic Disney films are based on public domain stories.

If there were copyright, those works wouldn’t have been created.

I hadn't put this together, but "The Great Mouse Detective" is a riff on Sherlock Holmes, but that didn't enter the public domain until much later. Would it have been better if it used the character and not just the general vibe?

Linux has used the GPL to its advantage. That can not exist without copyright. (The two camps in copyright discussions, improving it e.g. CC, or destroy it)

The GP wasn't referring to DRM or DMCA type "copyright protection" as the phrase is typically used. Nobody in this thread has mentioned any of that.

The GP is referring to legal protections, and guess what?

Linux is legally protected by copyright!

Linux is legally protected by copyright!

Linux is legally protected by copyright!

Nearly every GPL license--every one that we could name--protects a copyrighted work! Nearly every GFDL, AGPL, LGPL protects works by means of copyright law!

Can you imagine that? So do the Apache license, the BSD licenses, the MIT license! Creative Commons (except for CC0) these licenses are legally protecting copyrighted works. Thank you!

Now everyone who proposes to draw down limits on copyright coverage and reduce the length of terms and limit Disney from their Mouse rights, y'all are also proposing the same limits on GPL software, such as Linux, and nearly every work with a license from the above list -- all of Wikimedia Commons, much of Flickr.com, all your beloved F/OSS software will be subject to the same limitations and the same restrictions you want to put on Paramount and the RIAA's labels.

Yeah, I think most of us are fine with 50 years old Linux kernel being released into public domain.

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