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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

I suspect you are going to be downvoted into oblivion - So, on the faith that you aren't trolling, the issue isn't paying copyright holders for the intellectual property that they've created, and thereby incentivizing content creators to create more intellectual property. Nor, is the issue, that these people have a half-century government supported monopoly on their work.

The issues are (A) that the expiration for copyrights (government supported monopolies) keeps getting moved further and further into the future, far beyond any date required to incent content creators, and (B) perhaps even worse, content that is completely orphaned, and is serving no commercial value to anyone, also can't be distributed because it's locked up on copyrights that nobody is interested in any more.

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Not only do long copyright terms not incent creativity, they actually diminish the motive for creative people. Once they get one well-paying license attributed to their ownership, they can live off of it the rest of their lives -- and not only the creator/rightsholder, but generally multiple generations of his progeny. In a fair-but-reasonable world of copyright terms, one would be free to hold a monopoly on his creation for several years and make plenty of money off of it (in some cases, more money than anyone could need), but if a dependence on the government-granted monopoly was still important to the rightsholder after 10-15 years, he would be incentivized to create new stuff. His progeny would also be so incentivized, instead of living off their forefathers' work for 3+ generations and never needing to contribute anything themselves. This also means that works can enter the public domain while they're still relevant; with reasonable copyright terms, Star Wars would be entering the public domain. There are plenty of people who can remember Star Wars' opening night ... how many still living can remember and appreciate the opening of The Seven-Year Itch?

I'm not trolling.

What makes you think that you should ever be able to take for free, something that someone else created?

I think a content creator should be able to place any copyright terms on their work.

And then they die, and the estate doesn't know what the F they want to do with the IP and doesn't want to bother sorting it out, and it (legally) never sees the light of day thereafter. Copyrights EXPIRE for a reason. There isn't anyone (not in Hollywood, not in Congress, nowhere) that says copyrights should never, ever expire. It's a question of when.

Fine, make it so they have to be renewed every year, but can be renewed ad infinitum.

But that's not the actual debate about copyright that is taking place in society. In other words, the problem you're talking about is not the actual issue.

So someone should be rewarded just for being born into a family that happens to own the rights to a certain popular piece of content? Even if they themselves never did anything either creatively or in terms of hard work in their lives?

Aren't you just suggesting a tax free way of passing money between generations of a family (as current inheritance is subject to taxation)?

Also doesn't this kind of thing just discourage the creation of new artistic works? If there are tons of big popular individuals and companies, then how is the little guy meant to make a splash?

Please explain to me how many dollars I should personally chip in each year for the cost of running courts to protect your copyright claims, and what benefit I will get in return.

Copyrights EXPIRE for a reason. There isn't anyone (not in Hollywood, not in Congress, nowhere) that says copyrights should never, ever expire.

Maybe not now, but there certainly was:

  When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords
  the chairman asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity."

-- Mark Twain, http://www.bpmlegal.com/cotwain.html

    Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last
  forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate
  the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president]
  Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps
  the Committee may look at that next Congress.

-- Mary Bono, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#Su...

Good finds. However, whether some people want that really isn't pertinent.

Sure, some creative people would like infinite copyright. Me, I'd like a pet giraffe.

The question is should society spend lots of money and effort providing me with a giraffe and Mary Bono with indefinite copyright?

Imagine talking to your next-door neighbor and saying "this is why you should chip in for the cost to enforce copyright forever". Can you do it? Will your neighbor really benefit?

"Copyright" is just another way of saying "Government enforced Monopoly over the distribution and copying of a particular intangible expression of an idea." We aren't talking about physical items - we're talking about expressions of idea's. I'm not a fan of monopolies, and I'm even less of a fan of government enforced ones, unless there is some overwhelming public good, such as utility's access to powerlines, coordinated use of the radio frequency, etc...

In general, I'd like the government to stay out of managing my interaction with content creators, but, I will accept them granting a temporary monopoly to IP creators, so as to incent them to both (a) create, and (b) share their creations with me. That is the idea, of course, behind the Patent and Copyright.

I certainly don't believe that just because (to use one of a million possible examples), Apple happens to have "patented" the page-turning-process in a particular way, that they forevermore have the rights to page-turning in that form.

In the same way, I don't believe that someone who has written a story, forevermore has control over how that story may be used. Some reasonably temporary government enforced monopoly on the rights to copy/distribute is reasonable, but the US government has gone beyond what I think is reasonable. It's certainly gone beyond what was required to incentivize content creators to create and share their works with the public. And they've absolutely failed to manage the issues around orphaned works, which absolutely nobody benefits from being unable to copy/distribute.

What has, instead happened, is that the legislation that has become the law of the land (and, to some degree, infected other countries' laws as well) - has been written by lobbyists from Hollywood, and, with little public debate or benefit, been rammed down the public's throat.

I don't think see any important similarity between patent and copyright.

I think that if I write something down, I should be able to say, "If you want to consume this content, you have to agree to certain conditions." I see copyright as the legal mechanism to enforce this. That's all there is to it.

I wouldn't mind if there is an exception for orphaned works.

People want to argue that what I'm suggesting would result in horrible consequences, but it just wouldn't. Take your story example. So what if I forevermore have control over a story I wrote? It just doesn't matter. So what if my decendants get rich selling it? Again, it just doesn't matter. But, hell, it's my story, I and the people I share it with should be able to institute any rules around its distribution that we mutually agree on.

You talk about the government staying out of the interaction between content creators and consumers, but that is exactly my position, whereas you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed.

I don't think copyright can/should cover "an idea," only specific content.

The most important avenue of creative work is derivative works.

Copyrights essentially ban almost all forms of derivative works -- thereby depriving society of the most important form of creativity.

Also, old works are mostly lost to society -- whereas if they were easily distributed they could compete as free works with contemporary copyrighted works, thereby driving the competition and thus quality up.

Whether or not you get to control distribution of the story you wrote, in fact, whether it is your story at all -- is subject to debate.

A world with short copyright terms (or perhaps even no copyright terms at all) might make some authors less rich -- and it might make the world of content available to everyone much richer, too.

>> ...you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed.

That's like saying I force you to fall to the ground by not holding you up.

Works are inherently copyable. Copyright is an artificial monopoly which society spends money to create and enforce. It does so in order to get the benefit of encouraging creation of works. The whole goal is to have more works available as a public good.

This is exactly what the Constitution says:

>> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

If those works are made less useful to society by remaining locked up forever, there is less benefit to society, and less reason to spend money and effort creating artificial monopolies.

If it were shown that monopoly incentives were actually not very helpful in encouraging the creation of new works, copyright should be abolished. It would be a cost to society without a benefit to society.

Notice that the creator never enters as a concern here. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.

I disagree with practically everything you say, but I'm only going to address part of it.

Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.

I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.)

I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. (Or go to a more free country, if there is one.) That's not out of dedication to ideology, it's out of a need for psychological survival. I can't make myself work hard to benefit a society that is mainly just extractive of my production (i.e., bad for me).

As an aside, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of. But the Constitution isn't perfect, anyway, so it hardly matters.

>I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.)

You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.

Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem).

>I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive.

I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.

there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.

There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).

Any "positive right" (a right requiring the initiation of force) is not only qualitatively different (in that it requires the initiation of force instead of arising because the initiaition of force is barred), it is not a legitimate right.

Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite.

Disagree.

It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works.

That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression", or if you have a too-expansive view of copyright (e.g., conflating it with patents).

Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good.

Most good aspect of modern life comes from people serving themselves; benefitng the common good is a nice side-effect.

And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.

Really? That's an incredibly destructive and anti-life point of view.

>There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).

It takes a perverse definition of force to say that when person B is living on land that person A claims ownership of, and person A has him forcibly thrown off it, that person B was the one who initiated force.

>That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression

They have the power to prevent me, privately, behind closed doors, from writing my own stories with Harry Potter in and giving them to my friends.

Sir, the odiousness of your arguments is exceeded only by their selfishness.

But, at the very least, please elaborate on how your notion of property rights encompasses ideas. Please do explain how an idea, which can be copied at no cost and used to enrich the receiver, should be held in same esteem as a physical good which must be wrenched from your clinging little fingers.

On the bright side of javert's arguments, if we allowed for perpetual copyright, Greece would no longer have a debt problem, since it could be argued that every modern western story is derived from a Greek epic (not to mention all the royalties for the Greek language used in the New Testament).

Sir, the odiousness of your arguments is exceeded only by their selfishness.

Thank you. I consider selfishness a virtue. (However, contrary to what society has taught you, my selfishness does not hurt anybody else as long as I go about it in a rational way.)

Please do explain how an idea, which can be copied at no cost and used to enrich the receiver, should be held in same esteem as a physical good

I specifically said in an ancestor comment to this one that I don't believe the position I've taken on copyright would apply to "ideas."

How do you account for the fact that every story is derived from some other story? Why should Disney get to exploit Grimm's stories, but nobody can exploit Disney's?

>> I do not have any duty to "serve the common good."

Maybe I miscommunicated. I'm certainly not pushing for socialism or anything like it. I'm closer to libertarianism than anything. To me, the default answer for "should the government be involved in X?" is "no." To answer "yes," I want something pointing to either an "inalienable right", like "freedom from murder," or a clear public good, like "we all benefit if you aren't allowed to dump nuclear sludge in the storm drains."

I think the key thing we disagree on that I don't see copyright ownership as one of those inalienable rights, and you do. And I don't see indefinite copyright as a clear public good, either.

>> "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of.

I don't understand the distinction you're making. I quote again:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Whose good is intended by said progress, if not society's as a whole?

If you said, "that of the creators," I think that's unwarranted. They could easily have said, "To protect the Inherent Rights of Authors and Inventors, by securing for All Time the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." But they didn't. And they specifically said "limited Times".

As to whether it matters, it's the only existing legal rationale for copyright in the U.S. You may argue that IP is an inherent right, but only a constitutional amendment could properly make that into law.

I'm certainly not pushing for socialism or anything like it. I'm closer to libertarianism than anything. To me, the default answer for "should the government be involved in X?" is "no." To answer "yes," I want something pointing to either an "inalienable right", like "freedom from murder," or a clear public good, like "we all benefit if you aren't allowed to dump nuclear sludge in the storm drains."

Sounds like I'm in good company. That makes me happy.

I think the key thing we disagree on that I don't see copyright ownership as one of those inalienable rights, and you do. And I don't see indefinite copyright as a clear public good, either.

First, I think that people should be free to make a contract that states, "I will let you read this thing I've written, if you agree to certain conditions" (and those conditions could be anything - don't write fanfic, don't distribute, you have to do 50 pushups, whatever).

Then, copyright is just the government saying, "For the sake of convenience, here is the default contract. If you want something different, you can always explicitly opt out of this, and optionally specify something different."

I'm really interested to see if you buy this rationale for copyright.

Whose good is intended by said progress, if not society's as a whole?

I think the intention is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," which does benefit society, but indirectly. I think if the intention had been to promote the public good, they would have said "to promote the Good of the Public" :P

If you still think this is unclear, you're trying too hard (but let me know and I'll explain it differently.) Of course, you may disagree, but I want to make sure you understand what I'm saying.

As to whether it matters, it's the only existing legal rationale for copyright in the U.S.

True, I guess, but I'm not interested in how the current law can be interpreted ("legal rationale"); I'm interested in how things ought to be.

I'm gonna put a license agreement on each word you write, so that you pay its respectful owner's descendents. Sum up the copyright laws for anything someone else created (which is, basically, everything)

>What makes you think that you should ever be able to take for free, something that someone else created?

If we were talking about an ordinary creation, like a physical object, then I'd agree with you.

Creative works follow different rules though. The most successful ones become part of our shared culture and they permanently infect our brains. They become part of our jokes and our metaphors. You can't opt-out.

The most extreme example is Happy Birthday. Because of copyright, you can't legally take a recording of your child's special day and share it with others. It's a ridiculous situation, especially for such a basic song.

It's fine for the author to reap the rewards of their creation, but there needs to be some limit. 50 or so years is not asking too much.

Allow me to pose a similar question: What makes you think that you should ever be able to grant third-party ownership of those synapses in my brain that encode a particular creative work? In an extreme sense, copyright is the ownership of portions of peoples' minds. Consider that this must be balanced against the desire to encourage creation.

Society would not work if copyright would extend indefinitely. We would not have access to words, math, or the basic stories produced by culture. Imitation is the key aspect of all creative works.

As a training exercise, try find a work, any work, be that music, film, paintings or writing, and find one that is 100% original and has no inspiration from previous works. It is impossible, but you could always try. The work of William Shakespeare is well know for copying and incorporating its time cultural classics and stories.

So, if someone can make a 100% original, 100% uninfluenced work, I am fine in giving that person indefinite copyright.

> What makes you think that you should ever be able to take for free, something that someone else created?

That you have been guiled into believing this is reasonable is a large part of the problem. Let me flip it around:

> What makes you think that you should be able to restrain an idea for your own profit once it has been released?

Both of these are extremist positions. The trick is in finding a middle position that society can agree on.

> What makes you think that you should ever be able to take for free, something that someone else created?...I think a content creator should be able to place any copyright terms on their work.

When it isn't backed by natural scarcity, but through gov't regulation.

People can currently keep control of copyrightable goods forever -- it's called not sharing the good. If they want to publish the good, there are natural consequences. These natural consequences are adjusted by gov't protection through copyright.

I could just as well ask you why you think people should be able to take for free, gov't protection of their intangible works forever without ever giving back.

Copyright is a gov't invented "right." The only reason the right is even offered is that there is supposed to be mutual benefit for the creators and the general public.

Because I'm not an objectivist hack. Shame on HN for all the replies you've received. Your ignorant and wrong opinions do not deserve the air of legitimacy an honest discussion provides (and to be clear the honesty, in this case, is entirely one-sided).

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