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I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers lack the lobbying power only makes their actions illegal, not immoral.
There's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old, so I'm not sure how the copyright extension thing would justify piracy...
How do you explain the majority of modern independent music being heavily inspired by 80s pop and 90s hip-hop, especially when most of the producers are too young to have remembered listening to it over the air? What do you say when you look up an old music video on Youtube, and 70% of the time, the top comment is from a teenager? "Today's music sucks I'm 12 and none of the kids in my class listen to this but I think it's awesome like this if you're watching this in 2012!!!" has even become something of a cliche or a running joke at this point.
How do you explain What.cd, probably the largest private torrent tracker in existence, being largely dedicated to preserving and distributing out of print music? Anyone can find the latest Skrillex album on The Pirate Bay, but the true music lovers come to sites like What.cd to discover and trace the lineage of what they'll never hear on the radio.
How do you explain the ROM piracy scene, loved both by nostalgic 30-somethings and kids who never owned a Nintendo? How do you explain the people that spend months or even years painstakingly reverse engineering old, obscure games and translating tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of text, just to give them the treatment they wish had been available to them on a store shelf as children? What about the ones that do it completely anonymously, never receiving real credit for their contributions to history, in fear of legal repercussions or being socially stigmatized based on the subject matter of the works they translate?
Ditto for the anime/manga scene, where there is a seemingly endless supply of interesting old works in need of a translation?
How do you explain the continued love for classic films, from everything Disney's put out, to the original Star Wars trilogy, to Blade Runner, and so on?
There is a lot of cultural value in media that isn't exactly fresh. Private collections have allowed us to preserve the physical artifacts of human creation over the centuries, but a manuscript sealed in the tomb of a museum quickly fades from the public consciousness. The magic of internet-enabled piracy is that it has allowed us to keep mankind's creations culturally significant long past their expiration date, on an unprecedented scale. Today, we don't just remember the most standout works from previous decades that our parents passed down to us (or the ones their parents passed down to them). We discover things that few cared about when they were actually created, and give them a new life that their creators could never have predicted.
I suppose it may be hard to understand if you aren't in the thick of it, but so much of our modern culture is about appreciating and drawing inspiration from the past that an assertion like there's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old completely baffles me.
We're heading OT, but perhaps that I didn't make obvious that my comparison was relative is what caused your confusion.
Relative to new stuff, there is very little pirating of stuff over 20 years old (probably even over 1 year old since content is ephemeral). While I don't have the numbers to hand, I'm willing to assert that the amount of pirating of Elvis, The Beatles, etc is tiny relative to the pirating of Sky Fall, The Hobbit, Gangnam Style, Call Me Maybe, Games Of Thrones, etc.
Last I checked, all the copyright lobby and their lawyers are interested in measuring are the number of infractions (as a proxy for a completely fictitious number of "lost" sales).
A single Beatles anthology torrent (like this one—http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6061246/The_Beatles_-_The_Com... —with nearly 1000 currently active seeds) contains a wealth of useful material for adapters, remixers, mashup artists, and other curators/authors of potentially transformative works, an untold amount of potential inspiration for creators of all stripes, and ~400 potential infractions waiting for whoever has the misfortune of being caught accessing it.
Compare this to one infraction for downloading a copy of Skyfall.
Furthermore:
>While I don't have the numbers to hand, I'm willing to assert that the amount of pirating of Elvis, The Beatles, etc is tiny relative to the pirating of Sky Fall, The Hobbit, Gangnam Style, Call Me Maybe, Games Of Thrones, etc.
I'm willing to assert—with just as much evidence—that you don't have the aforementioned numbers "to hand" because they don't exist.
According to Last.Fm statistics it does not seem that any musical band is listened to more than The Beatles. And virtually everything by The Beatles in the circulation is "pirated". And this stuff should be damn near public domain if you ask me.
Totally. I don't. I just don't.
>Gangnam Style is available on Youtube for free.
Oh shit. I didn't know that [OK, I did. And it's not free, but you seem not to have read the last billion "you're the product" posts.].
Oh wait, 10 seconds of research on TPB says:
Gangnam Style [one song] - 8k Seeds
Beatles [lots of stuff] - 3-4k seeds
>having missed all this internet stuff.
I assume the ironic bit where I used this internet stuff to disprove your point is lost on you...
The trick is: you have to integrate the numbers over time. Once you multiply the Beatles number by ten [years of active file sharing versus one for Gangnam Style] you'll unsurprisingly find out that Beatles are the king.
You're not the only one person confused by "pretty much new stuff" at the top. This stuff falls as readily as it climbed. That's why I quoted Last.Fm. Beatles seem to be the most popular band ever up to this day, integrally. Do you have something to say about this? Because you claimed otherwise.
Gangnam Style [one song] - 8k Seeds*
I couldn't find the details about the licensing of Gangnam Style, but your argument seems to be that it's not "free" (an almost uselessly vague term in this context) because it's on TPB.
Certainly, you need actual numbers rather than handwaving arguments.
If copyright is never going to expire, what does it matter how old the content is that is getting pirated?
(i'm not saying there is a justification, but i can understand the OP's logic)
There's an enormous amount of pirating of content that is over 20 years old.
As someone else pointed out there's a lot of decent old music, as well as older films (Star Wars or Snow White anyone?). One thing people forget is that there's a lot of Software that's getting older. There's plenty of older games that are being pirated but there'll come a point when OSes we use now reach that age.
But earnings themselves aren't a justification, it's the public good that comes from the further works you create while striving for more royalties that are the justification for this expensive and wasteful bureaucracy.
And there's no reasonable argument for 150y copyright, but the very stories copyrighted (Snow White, etc) are a powerful argument against copyright at all. With modern copyright on the works they borrowed, Disney never would have existed - unable to pay for access to cultural heritage.
Which, by the way, is indistinguishable from rationalizing the sentiment of "I want stuff without having to pay for it"
I don't want to rationalize stuff, but I've just finished reading Locke's "Two Treatises on Government", one of the guys that started all this "the only true freedom is the protection of property"-thingie, and I just want to add that irrespective of the fact that one might agree or not with Locke's views you have to take into consideration that it has not always been like this (i.e. private property being "sacred" etc). In fact, Locke starts by arguing against people (Filmer and others) who were saying something of the like that the monarchs of the time had an irrevocable right to rule (and presumably to own everything under the skies), handed down (the right to rule) to them from generation to generation since Adam (the Genesis Adam). To say nothing of the 20th century madness that afflicted almost half of the known world, I'm talking about the Marxist/Leninist views on property.
What I want to say is that what constitutes "property", "to own stuff" etc. has not always been "set in stone" as a "moral" thingie (whatever definition of "moral" you want to come up with). So people for whom piracy is "immoral" are taking a very short view of the whole thing, and possibly also deluding themselves into thinking that what is "moral" is almost by definition "immortal" and forever. They should take a more pragmatic view.
The social contract in the constitution was to grant people with limited exclusivity for works they created. Patents have roughly stayed within that parameter (with exception to patent abuses on design and software).
For copyright, it was originally 17 years, extendable another 17 years. Works released in 1981 (my date of birth) will expire in 120 years. I will be dead before they are in public domain.
The social contract was 'reneogiated' by campaign donations, without input from the people. The supreme court found that forever extensions the way congress is implementing them as 'constitutional' and it was Congress's problem.
So yes, I believe that should open up the debate on piracy as a legitimate solution.
The reality is that most of "the people" just don't care about this issue. But they've had their input.
Would you honestly say that you would vote for a representative who agreed with you on copyright agenda but disagreed on all other aspects (or at the very least, most of the categories that are directly important to you)? That's the choice we're asked to make. Should I re-elect Senator Y if he is copyright lobbyist's bitch? He does however take strong stances on the issues A, B and C which I do like though.
Exactly. Due to the imperfect nature of our democracy, copyright has never been voted on by the general public. The general public has effectively voted for foreign policy, the economy, numerous social issues including the right to vote, reproductive rights, marriage rights, etc.
However the public has never effectively voted for more minor issues like copyright. The only people who are effectively voicing their opinions are politicians themselves and the corporations who pay them. It has never been a large enough issue for the general population dictate on, one way or the other.
I'll never understand why people think this is a valid argument. We're being asked to conflate topics that are not closely related and, by voting, make unnecessary compromises. An overhaul of democracy is pretty much overdue.
It would be in the publishers interest to obtain a few scary convictions for the chilling effect. I could see how auditing software would become useful: software that would tell you what content to take off your iPod when travelling to a certain country. Such software would need an accurate database of copyright status for each content in each country. I predict an open source source database of this type will be created in the future.
On top of my head I can't see how you own a book if others can copy and distribute it. For practical purposes, the point of owning is that you can control distribution, charge for it or, say, not allow someone to do a movie based on it.
Let's leave theories aside. I own a book when I decide when /how /where /if to print. If you can legally get it, modify and distribute it for free, I lose sales. That's almost certain. So if the government doesn't protect my book /song /movie the same way it protects your iPhone or vacation home, how do I own it?
(I understand what the law and constitution say, I just disagree, especially for certain works.)
I buy a book in the store, I own the book. You create a story, you have the right to limit copies of that story. You can sell it, or you can let it sit unpublished in your desk.
Once you sell a copy of your book, you no longer "own" that book, you sold it. If your story was an iPhone or vacation home, that would be the end of it.
Most governments have decided to give you a copy right, where you limit the right to copy your work for a limited time. It's not the same as ownership. If I buy a book from you, you can't come back into my house with the police and take it back. But copyright gives you the right to come into my house with the police if I'm making unauthorized copies of your book.
"I am poor and rich people pay too little tax so it is ethically OK for me to steal from rich people"
"I am a native American and white people robbed my ancestors so it is ethically OK for me to steal from white people"
...etc
As for the justification of piracy, I suppose it is some form of protest? Instead of paying for copyrighted materials, just pirate them in protest of unfair and Unconstitutional copyright laws? Wouldn't it just be better to do a boycott of organizations that lobbied government to pass such laws and only buy from organizations that oppose those laws? Not only that but there is enough free and open source software, media, and ebooks and materials that ones doesn't need to buy the commercial copyrighted stuff anymore and still not pay much.
Stuff older than 20 years still gets pirated, old DOS apps, old 8 bit computer ROMs and Disk files for emulators, old movies and TV shows. Most of the older stuff lacks DRM malware and runs really fast as compared to the modern stuff that is bloated with rootkits and phone-home activation code checkers.
It has gone to the supreme court and was upheld: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft
Because they have nothing to lose. I only ever hear this argument from people who have no IP of their own in the market. I think shortened copyright terms would be good public policy, but the fact is that as a consumer you don't have any kind of moral claim on others' work.
The social contract is "we will protect your works, but in exchange everyone gets them after a time." This is true for patents and copyright.
We did our part, we protected their works for the period agreed, but instead of them doing their part (releasing them freely) they changed the rules at the last minute.
You make it sound like this is some small business or individual we're dealing with, which is simply a mis-characterisation. The people who made these works are dead, these are corporations.
A prominent example is Notch, the creator of Minecraft, which is also a member of the Pirate Party.
The answer feels trivial to me, which means I'm probably missing something. Fixed term for a few decades from the creation of the work, maybe 30 years or 40 years. After that, you need to give a copy of the work to the Library of Congress, pay a nominal fee, and you get a 5 year extension. Take as many of those as you want.
This greatly simplifies everything. If you find a work that is older than the base term, you look it up in the copyright extension database. If it's in there, you can find out who owns the rights to it, and try to license rights. If it isn't in there, it's public domain. If somebody doesn't stay on the ball enough to renew their rights every five years, it probably isn't all that commercially valuable, and moves into the public domain.
It feels completely unreasonable to me. There's no reason why Disney should be given an exception when others aren't. It's idiotic to suggest that they should get special treatment just because their IP is commercially valuable.
The Steamboat Willie article is specious. Thanks to a failure to register copyrights (back when those things mattered) the Fleischer studio "Superman" cartoons are in the public domain. The world did not end. People may use and sell these cartoons, but they still have to be careful not to run aground against the Superman trademark.
The same thing would happen to Steamboat Willie.
I see more value in having Disney pay an appropriately large amount of money to keep their IP than I see in making sure that their specific content gets into the public domain.
Who cares about steamboat willy if Disney is going to fight tooth and nail over it? It's everything else that will expire into the public domain that I care about.
It's not such a big deal applied to films; the amount in the government coffers is swollen by less than the extra Disney fans have voluntarily spent on old films, but no great loss is suffered by those who aren't willing or able to pay Disney's asking price. But establishing a principle that corporations should be able to retrospectively extend the fixed-term of their IP for cash would be particularly dangerous when it comes to things like patents...
| I don't see any benefit to mankind if people were
| suddenly free to print Mickey Mouse onto t-shirts
| and sell them.
I can't tell if you're just trolling or uninformed, but there are always a handful of posts in these discussions that don't understand the differences between patent, copyright and trademark.
I haven't really absorbed his argument, but he seemed pretty sure about it, and that we needed something else to (legitimately, in both our opinions) protect Disney's ability to control their brand even if copyright expired. He recommended giving Disney something very much like "right of publicity" for Mickey Mouse so they can still control the character, while allowing lots of old stuff to still enter the public domain.
Even if specific instances of Mickey Mouse's likeness are trademarked, I have a hard time believing that someone could be selling "Mickey Mouse" t-shirts on the street and not be in a risky legal grey zone.
[I'll also note that as an IP lawyer he probably has a rather conservative view of this. Thinking from Disney's perspective they don't want any trademark lawsuit to be in a legal grey zone. They want them all to be slam-dunks so that they can get their way.]
From Wikipedia: "It is sometimes erroneously stated that the Mickey Mouse character is only copyrighted."[1]
I could have avoided this one. :)
But if I want to commercialize this art, then I need to release it into the marketplace. As soon as it is released, it can be copied (or there will eventually be a technology to copy it). Therefore, copyright is society's (and the government's) way of protecting my ability to profit while making my art public. In exchage for that protection, the US laws used to impose (there was not choice, other than secrecy or copyright) the release into the public domain after a certain time.
The issue is, marketplace protection (legislation, enforcement) costs money. The richness of public domain material seemed to justify the cost on society. If copyrights become perpertual, it would make sense to me that the ones who benefit should pay for it. Then again, they could argue that an open marketplace full of desireable content is valuable in and of itself (to both society and the economy).
After all, it is society, not the content producers, that pays the price for having no culture returned to the society that birthed it. Right up until a company like Disney finds there is no more public domain for them to take ideas from. But, like most problems we Americans have, we'll let a future generation worry about that.
An argument people make on Hollywood's side is that sure, there are entire storage facilities of content that should be moved into the public domain, but who is going to fund the conversion (old deteriorated 35mm film) to media usable by the mass public?
Then on the public side, who is going to manage/fund the perpetual database and management of what's public domain now and what's still copyright protected.
I'm glad that Europe is stubborn and is moving works into the public domain. As more and more good content is becoming freely accessible, it gives our policy makers here material to argue with.
I'm not familiar with this argument. My understanding is nothing has to be "funded" to be "moved" into the public domain, it just becomes public domain by default and if anyone wants to make the necessary conversions that's their voluntary prerogative (ex. Gutenberg Project). In fact I've read that public domain works are generally more likely to be preserved, and that there are loads of early 20th century works that are fading away because essentially no one is free to make copies of them to keep them around.
No, lobby money goes to lobbyists, election campaigns, and to support services of the lobby industrial complex. Money from "this should otherwise be public domain" fees could go to the general treasury and help pay for, well, anything.
Absolutely not! Why let them get unlimited extensions? How does that give back to the people?
In fact, I gander the comments here will soon be filled with of "here's how I would do it" comments, none of which will make a mote of a difference.
What can we do, really?
It seems insane that the reasons given hold any merit beyond a money-grab. And while I may be a bit myopic here, the "motivates content-producers" feels flimsier still than monetary arguments.
Do most creative works really need even ten years of protection? Do you suppose Shakespeare would have made more plays or less if copyright existed in his day?
We could get a bit smarter, and lobby - but we're unlikely to be able to out-spend Disney.
Or we can ignore the legal system and share things, which is probably the most practical and effective approach. They can't imprison us all.
That would be a depressing "starting point" of progress, to be sure, but since it only requires inaction it might be more achievable than positive copyright reform that requires action, especially since everyone disagrees on the proper action to take.
So the choice is between (a) letting 7-year-olds everywhere watch Snow White, and (b) having more money to pay for roads, schools and cancer research. Is option (a) necessarily better?
Do you have any evidence to counteract the common wisdom that movies rarely actually make any money on paper?
So the choice is between (a) letting 7-year-olds everywhere watch Snow White, and (b) having more money to pay for roads, schools and cancer research. Is option (a) necessarily better?
Letting Disney sell Snow White doesn't magically create money from nothing. The money that isn't spent by consumers on Snow White will be spent on something else, which will eventually be taxed, funding roads, schools, and cancer research.
And people wonder why there's such widespread disrespect for copyright.
Further, I think there is room to tie trademark into the process for media properties. In cases like Steamboat Willy, the character reflect a trademark for the Disney business. If it were applied as such, one might argue that a public domain version of the film (which could be seen as a product in the trademark domain) might be freely distributable but not modifiable without risking trademark infringement. This protects the free flow of information to later generations, as well as provides the company a means to protect the its brand from confusing or abusing variants/remixes. Further, registered trademarks already require regular renewal from a living person or operating business.
Not sure how one would apply that music and non-fiction (or if one should even try); seems about useful as copyrighting N seconds of silence.
(Obligatory: I am not a lawyer.)
I happily pay for my subscription to The Economist and enjoy reading it on my iPad. But they don't even allow you to select a single word in an article, which would make it possible to look things up in a dictionary.
This kind of limitation to attempt enforcement of copyright is part of the whole problem right now.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the only one on the list who I've heard of.
Plus, I think the argument is weaker when duration is already life+70. If it were, say, life+0, or life+10, you might have an argument about their widow/orphan, but life+70 is already enough to cover any survivors comfortably for the rest of their own lives. Life+100 gets into territory where their great-grandkids are getting the money.
Walt Disney's first animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was published in 1937, 74 years after the death of Jacob Grimm. The Mickey Mouse copyright extension is 70 years after the death of the longest surviving creator.
That said, they could lobby to increase copyright terms for post-1927 works only, or corporate works only and leave natural persons out in the cold. It's uncertain whether these moves would be too politically extreme for Disney.
That's why this exists: http://www.gutenberg.ca/
Can any one make the argument why we should give Disney an unlimited monopoly on the content they create? Why should we pay for courts and systems to enforce their artificial scarcity, if they cannot uphold their side of the agreement?
Maybe not, if it's something I invent or write, why does someone have to give me rights over it? They shouldn't take them instead... "shall not."
I understand how the constitution is written but
You do not control the neurons in other people's brains. If you share an idea, it is as much theirs as yours. If someone produces something based upon that idea, you cannot rightly take it from them because the thing itself was never yours. There is no way to enforce IP without undermining physical property rights.
They shouldn't take them instead... "shall not."
Sidestepping the issue of espionage, nobody is "taking" anything from you. In virtually all of the cases that attract attention, IP was intentionally shared. If you publish a book, you can't rightly turn around and yell at someone for reading it. Futhermore, producing a copy of a work does not deprive any of its existing possessors.
I understand how the constitution is written
It's the why that matters. You are looking at this from the perspective that IP rights are negative rights (= freedoms), when they are clearly not. When you recognize that IP rights are positive rights (= privileges), then you will see that the authors of the Constitution were being generous in affording this protection, which in the "life, liberty, [physical] property" framework you would otherwise not have.
It is better to think that you do not "own" IP, but rather hold it in trust for the public, and in the interim, you get to reap some benefit as recompense for your creative contribution.
They don't have to give you rights over it. You already get all of the natural rights associated with it. What you don't get is the additional right to prevent other people from using it or copying it until a government gives you that right.
Restricting other people is an artificial construct and that is enforced by the government. This is artificial scarcity unlike property rights where ownership naturally deprives someone else of the property.
Ideally, the government only grants you a limited (time) monopoly in exchange for incentivizing people to create. If we aren't going to get anything in exchange, why should we grant you additional rights?
If you can copy my code /book or whatnot what rights do I have? Almost none. If there was no government, I could kill you for it to maybe scare others.
> "This is artificial scarcity unlike property rights where ownership naturally deprives someone else of the property."
Can I use your house while you are away? On the nightstand, I'll leave $5 or whatever the wear and tear might be for the night.
Or "clone" Coca Cola? They can keep theirs
Ah, see?--"while i am away". Possession of tangible items deprives someone else the use of it. There is no such natural limitation on ideas or expression of ideas. It requires additional government "interference" before ideas and expression are made to be scarce.
> If you can copy my code /book or whatnot what rights do I have?
Exactly! Additional rights are granted by the government, not taken away. You possess the original copy. Why would you assume to have an additional rights? If you don't want people to copy it, don't let them see it.
You are not using your home anyway and I was gonna pay the wear and tear.
Better for the public good, hell, maybe I get some great ideas while I sit on Bill Gates' porch ;)
"Possession of tangible items deprives someone else the use of it."
If no one can legally copy my book (or my grandfather's book) I had a better chance of making money from it; if it's free fewer people will buy a copy (we can all agree to that.) If the government says that now I no longer have copyright, how aren't I deprived of something?
Some people leave homes, estates, gold coins, stocks, others leave books or songs. Roy Disney's family is a live and well, and so is Disney Inc, and to me it seems unfair to them to lose Mickey Mouse
Of course. But if you want to base fairness on your chances to make money, just ask the government to force people to give you money instead of this convoluted IP situation.
> If the government says that now I no longer have copyright, how aren't I deprived of something?
I'm not sure how you can say you are deprived of something because they "only" gave you a 90 year copyright. It's like saying someone deprived you of money because they only gave you a million dollars not an infinite supply.
That's not the right question to ask anyway. Copyright only exists insomuch as government grants it - thus they can take it away if they please, or after an arbitrary duration. You should really ask how long is reasonable for a creator's work to be protected, and just how many generations of his descendants should inherit that right.
But with the current system, copyrights never expire, and copyright holders don't innovate like they used to do. As a result our economy has gotten worse, and unemployment keeps going up, and the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is denied.
The US Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 has been violated by these modern copyright laws.
And I quote:
"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."
It's my opinion of course.