6 ms·

Copyright has also been taken to its logical extreme in recent history, granting copyright terms that, in many cases, won't expire for 150 years or more from th

Copyright has also been taken to its logical extreme in recent history, granting copyright terms that, in many cases, won't expire for 150 years or more from the date of publication, well beyond the lifespan of any human. Copyright was supposed to be a compromise between the public and the rightsholder, where the public was willing to give up some of its natural right to copying and sharing in order to incentivize creativity. We've left all that in the dust now, and our copyright laws are currently based solely on scare tactics from massive media conglomerates. IP reform is badly needed but I think we've still got a little ways to go before it seems so "common sense" that it occurs. Once the generation that grew up on Napster and its successors gets into their 50s, we might see some substantive change.

aidenn0 11y ago
Unfortunately I've seen the opposite result so far. I've seen authors literally balk at the suggestion that they shouldn't have full control over their creations for perpetuity, and upon further digging, their point of view was that anything less is immoral, not just illegal.
- rayiner 11y ago
  I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? I can have perpetual rights to some land that my ancestors (well not my ancestors since I'm an immigrant) stole from native Americans, which existed long before any human was alive, but somehow my right to something that I created that never existed before is subject to a social balancing? I don't buy it.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    Your land didn't depend on any other land in order to be created, for one thing. If you want perpetual copyright, go live on a deserted island and work without any outside influence.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Sure, creative works may be influenced by other creative works, but those are also protected by copyright and bought and paid for. I don't see how your argument justifies anyone else having rights to your creative works.
      - magicalist 11y ago
        > I don't see how your argument justifies anyone else having rights to your creative works. Considering that they are intangible, I think you'll have to justify your exclusive rights to your creative works and why the government should enforce them. Fortunately (in the US) the constitution has you covered, and notably does not root it in an abstract right of ownership but as a means toward "the progress of science and useful arts".
        rayiner 11y ago
        I agree that the rival nature of physical property tends to cut in favor of stronger protections for physical versus intangible property. On the other hand, given the moralistic undertone of "rights" I think it doesn't make sense to ignore the other distinction, which is that intangible property is much more the product of human will and effort than many kinds of tangible property, particularly land. I think that cuts the other way--in favor of stronger protections for created property than not-created property.
      - CamperBob2 11y ago
        You can't afford to pay for every creative influence you've ever had. Neither can J. K. Rowling or Stephen King.
      - Retra 11y ago
        You don't pay for your language or your culture. You have them because you are a social being, and because your brain is built to absorb that information. You can't regulate exclusivity on it. If you want perpetual exclusive rights to your creative works, then don't share them with anybody. Because you don't actually have a right to get paid. You have a right to participate in your society and its economy.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    The question isn't why should society have any rights to an artistic creation, but why should a producer of non-material products have the right to inflict government violence on a third party who is using that product. The answer for material property is that the use of material goods is usually exclusionary: one person using it means another person not using it, and creating a protocol to govern use and enforced by a third party leads to less violence over it. The same isn't true of intellectual property: as productivity growth took off in early modern societies, those societies that provided for intellectual property outcompeted those that didn't, as it provided an incentive to create a newly valuable good. But it's not trivial to say that "intellectual property forever!" is utility maximizing--there's a balance to be had between the public interest to incentivize the creation of new goods, and the public interest in lowering the cost of those goods.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    The primary reason is that material goods are of exclusionary use. If I'm farming an acre of land, you can't. You are no poorer if I sing a song you wrote than if I don't. A lesser argument is from history: Organized societies that consume resources faster than they are provided (so essentially all societies that aren't sparsely populated hunter-gatherers) need some form of restriction on use of exclusive goods such as land. Organized societies have existed with essentially no restrictions on what we today call intellectual property. Some copyright is good, as we couldn't have 9 figure budget films without it, but if we were to restrict copyright to 40 or even 20 years, we would affect that not at all. After typing all this out, I recognized your nick, so suppose that you know all of this; what is your counterpoint?
    - rayiner 11y ago
      If the exclusionary nature of physical property was the rationale, then borrowing property when someone else wasn't using it, or analogous non-conflicting activities like squatting, it wouldn't be considered infringement of property rights.
      - Bjartr 11y ago
        Interestingly some countries, such as Scotland, have "Freedom to Roam"[1] laws that codify that very idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        Squatting would remain problematic because the owner of physical property would no longer be able to start and stop using their property as they pleased; they would have to wait for the squatter to vacate, and would be subjected to the sight of their property in use by a squatter (humans are territorial). As well, squatting often results in damage to the property. If these concerns could be addressed, why wouldn't squatting be okay?
  - amalcon 11y ago
    The only advantage to allowing this form of land right ownership is that it facilitates a mostly market-based solution to the land-use distribution problem. This can't be done with intellectual property, because it is often non-fungible. Sometimes an artistic work becomes very important to a culture, such that there's no suitable replacement. Note: This doesn't necessarily make IP a bad thing. It actually doesn't say anything about it either way. The analogy to land, however, is not a useful one because of that difference.
  - tbrownaw 11y ago
    Physical property rights are about things you can do. You have something, you get to keep it and do things with it. Intellectual property rights are about things other people cannot do. If Alice wants to give Bob a copy of a book Eve wrote, she has to go out of her way to find and get permission from Eve or risk facing state violence. That second one is unnatural (see also, positive vs negative rights). It is a deliberate state imposition, on the theory that society will end up better off as a whole. It's not a question of whether society "should" have rights, but of whether it's beneficial to interfere with the natural order of things.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      > Physical property rights are about things you can do. You have something, you get to keep it and do things with it. Physical property rights are definitely about what others cannot do. The state threatens violence to keep people from growing corn upon or even walking upon plots of land without license to do so.
      - tbrownaw 11y ago
        Huh. I definitely have the feeling that the difference is more than just information being non-rivalrous, but yeah it can't be as simple as I was trying to think... . Didn't absentee land ownership used to be looked down on? Maybe that ties in somehow. Trespassing, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam so it sounds like it's not nearly universal and at least in some places tied to liability concerns and (potentially) interfering with the owner's use of the property. Maybe with IP it's that the owner/creator can't know unless they're told or actively go looking? But then that more-or-less gets back to non-rivalrousness. Hm. Some information actually does have effects if known/used, like a successful stock trading algorithm. But then that's not "artistic", and brings to mind that IP is more than just patents and copyright.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? To the original, they don't. To a copy of it, made by someone else, why should the artist have any say over what other people do? If they don't want to be copied, don't put stuff out there.
    - jfim 11y ago
      > why should the artist have any say over what other people do? Because amongst other things, an artist might want to control what their works are associated with and how they are displayed (known as moral rights in some copyright laws, not sure it applies to the US). For example, assume an artist makes a song; they get to say if it can be used to advertise things they don't approve of or if it gets remixed into something else. It means that writers get protection against a publisher just taking their manuscript and doing s/Harry Potter/Terry Totter/, claiming it as an original work and selling it with a larger advertising budget than the original author. It prevents someone from taking your pictures or other original works and selling them as postcards , T-shirts and coffee mugs without your consent.
      - gnaritas 11y ago
        > Because amongst other things, an artist might want to control what their works are associated with and how they are displayed (known as moral rights in some copyright laws, not sure it applies to the US). The issue here isn't what the artist wants. The issue is whether we as a society should allow the artist to control an expression of an idea, and if so, for how long. What society wants is more important than what an artist wants and intellectual property is a made up figment of societies imagination. Words are not actually property, my copying those words doesn't steal yours. My using the same sequence of some part of your song shouldn't entitle you a right to say no, I own that phrase and if it does, we are all harmed by said restrictions. Information is not property in that sense and should not be. Intellectual property rights are harmful to society if not kept in strict check. It is now virtually impossible to write a computer program without violating someone's IP even though you've never seen it. That means we've gone too far in allowing people to own ideas.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? To the original, they don't. To a copy of it, made by someone else, why should the artist have any say over what other people do? If they don't want to be copied, don't put stuff out there. Just because you string a few words together, an intangible idea, it shouldn't give you some natural right to forbid other people from using those words in that same order.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    How do you propose pricing the influence of existing copyrighted works on new works, without burdening artists to the point that human culture grinds to a halt? Also, you pay tax on land you own, you use public roads to get to work, walk on public sidewalks, use public parks, etc.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    ...somehow my right to something that I created that never existed before is subject to a social balancing? You already know that the answer to this is that once you've shared your creation with others, it's no longer yours. The copy that resides in their brains belongs to them. You cannot, without the artifice of copyright, claim ownership of pieces of others' brains, or what they later assemble from those pieces.
  - tremon 11y ago
    > Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? Because artists prefer to get paid. "Society" is the one paying the artist, so it should get something in return. And how much "society" is willing to pay depends on how much it gets in return. For example, "I" am willing to pay exactly zero for digital content that is still subject to license enforcement after purchase, but I'm willing to pay 40 euro for a one-time live performance. Sure, an artist can retain all rights to their artistic creation if they store the creation in their own basement. They can even leave it to their heirs in a will.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > I've seen authors literally balk at the suggestion that they shouldn't have full control over their creations for perpetuity, and upon further digging, their point of view was that anything less is immoral, not just illegal. Their opinion is biased, of course they think that; they're wrong, but they're free to think that. Intellectual property is unnatural, allowing people to claim to own ideas forever is absurd.

aidenn0 11y ago

Unfortunately I've seen the opposite result so far. I've seen authors literally balk at the suggestion that they shouldn't have full control over their creations for perpetuity, and upon further digging, their point of view was that anything less is immoral, not just illegal.

rayiner 11y ago
I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? I can have perpetual rights to some land that my ancestors (well not my ancestors since I'm an immigrant) stole from native Americans, which existed long before any human was alive, but somehow my right to something that I created that never existed before is subject to a social balancing? I don't buy it.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Your land didn't depend on any other land in order to be created, for one thing. If you want perpetual copyright, go live on a deserted island and work without any outside influence.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Sure, creative works may be influenced by other creative works, but those are also protected by copyright and bought and paid for. I don't see how your argument justifies anyone else having rights to your creative works.
    - magicalist 11y ago
      > I don't see how your argument justifies anyone else having rights to your creative works. Considering that they are intangible, I think you'll have to justify your exclusive rights to your creative works and why the government should enforce them. Fortunately (in the US) the constitution has you covered, and notably does not root it in an abstract right of ownership but as a means toward "the progress of science and useful arts".
      - rayiner 11y ago
        I agree that the rival nature of physical property tends to cut in favor of stronger protections for physical versus intangible property. On the other hand, given the moralistic undertone of "rights" I think it doesn't make sense to ignore the other distinction, which is that intangible property is much more the product of human will and effort than many kinds of tangible property, particularly land. I think that cuts the other way--in favor of stronger protections for created property than not-created property.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      You can't afford to pay for every creative influence you've ever had. Neither can J. K. Rowling or Stephen King.
    - Retra 11y ago
      You don't pay for your language or your culture. You have them because you are a social being, and because your brain is built to absorb that information. You can't regulate exclusivity on it. If you want perpetual exclusive rights to your creative works, then don't share them with anybody. Because you don't actually have a right to get paid. You have a right to participate in your society and its economy.
- scarmig 11y ago
  The question isn't why should society have any rights to an artistic creation, but why should a producer of non-material products have the right to inflict government violence on a third party who is using that product. The answer for material property is that the use of material goods is usually exclusionary: one person using it means another person not using it, and creating a protocol to govern use and enforced by a third party leads to less violence over it. The same isn't true of intellectual property: as productivity growth took off in early modern societies, those societies that provided for intellectual property outcompeted those that didn't, as it provided an incentive to create a newly valuable good. But it's not trivial to say that "intellectual property forever!" is utility maximizing--there's a balance to be had between the public interest to incentivize the creation of new goods, and the public interest in lowering the cost of those goods.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  The primary reason is that material goods are of exclusionary use. If I'm farming an acre of land, you can't. You are no poorer if I sing a song you wrote than if I don't. A lesser argument is from history: Organized societies that consume resources faster than they are provided (so essentially all societies that aren't sparsely populated hunter-gatherers) need some form of restriction on use of exclusive goods such as land. Organized societies have existed with essentially no restrictions on what we today call intellectual property. Some copyright is good, as we couldn't have 9 figure budget films without it, but if we were to restrict copyright to 40 or even 20 years, we would affect that not at all. After typing all this out, I recognized your nick, so suppose that you know all of this; what is your counterpoint?
  - rayiner 11y ago
    If the exclusionary nature of physical property was the rationale, then borrowing property when someone else wasn't using it, or analogous non-conflicting activities like squatting, it wouldn't be considered infringement of property rights.
    - Bjartr 11y ago
      Interestingly some countries, such as Scotland, have "Freedom to Roam"[1] laws that codify that very idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      Squatting would remain problematic because the owner of physical property would no longer be able to start and stop using their property as they pleased; they would have to wait for the squatter to vacate, and would be subjected to the sight of their property in use by a squatter (humans are territorial). As well, squatting often results in damage to the property. If these concerns could be addressed, why wouldn't squatting be okay?
- amalcon 11y ago
  The only advantage to allowing this form of land right ownership is that it facilitates a mostly market-based solution to the land-use distribution problem. This can't be done with intellectual property, because it is often non-fungible. Sometimes an artistic work becomes very important to a culture, such that there's no suitable replacement. Note: This doesn't necessarily make IP a bad thing. It actually doesn't say anything about it either way. The analogy to land, however, is not a useful one because of that difference.
- tbrownaw 11y ago
  Physical property rights are about things you can do. You have something, you get to keep it and do things with it. Intellectual property rights are about things other people cannot do. If Alice wants to give Bob a copy of a book Eve wrote, she has to go out of her way to find and get permission from Eve or risk facing state violence. That second one is unnatural (see also, positive vs negative rights). It is a deliberate state imposition, on the theory that society will end up better off as a whole. It's not a question of whether society "should" have rights, but of whether it's beneficial to interfere with the natural order of things.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > Physical property rights are about things you can do. You have something, you get to keep it and do things with it. Physical property rights are definitely about what others cannot do. The state threatens violence to keep people from growing corn upon or even walking upon plots of land without license to do so.
    - tbrownaw 11y ago
      Huh. I definitely have the feeling that the difference is more than just information being non-rivalrous, but yeah it can't be as simple as I was trying to think... . Didn't absentee land ownership used to be looked down on? Maybe that ties in somehow. Trespassing, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam so it sounds like it's not nearly universal and at least in some places tied to liability concerns and (potentially) interfering with the owner's use of the property. Maybe with IP it's that the owner/creator can't know unless they're told or actively go looking? But then that more-or-less gets back to non-rivalrousness. Hm. Some information actually does have effects if known/used, like a successful stock trading algorithm. But then that's not "artistic", and brings to mind that IP is more than just patents and copyright.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? To the original, they don't. To a copy of it, made by someone else, why should the artist have any say over what other people do? If they don't want to be copied, don't put stuff out there.
  - jfim 11y ago
    > why should the artist have any say over what other people do? Because amongst other things, an artist might want to control what their works are associated with and how they are displayed (known as moral rights in some copyright laws, not sure it applies to the US). For example, assume an artist makes a song; they get to say if it can be used to advertise things they don't approve of or if it gets remixed into something else. It means that writers get protection against a publisher just taking their manuscript and doing s/Harry Potter/Terry Totter/, claiming it as an original work and selling it with a larger advertising budget than the original author. It prevents someone from taking your pictures or other original works and selling them as postcards , T-shirts and coffee mugs without your consent.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      > Because amongst other things, an artist might want to control what their works are associated with and how they are displayed (known as moral rights in some copyright laws, not sure it applies to the US). The issue here isn't what the artist wants. The issue is whether we as a society should allow the artist to control an expression of an idea, and if so, for how long. What society wants is more important than what an artist wants and intellectual property is a made up figment of societies imagination. Words are not actually property, my copying those words doesn't steal yours. My using the same sequence of some part of your song shouldn't entitle you a right to say no, I own that phrase and if it does, we are all harmed by said restrictions. Information is not property in that sense and should not be. Intellectual property rights are harmful to society if not kept in strict check. It is now virtually impossible to write a computer program without violating someone's IP even though you've never seen it. That means we've gone too far in allowing people to own ideas.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > I think that's a really compelling viewpoint. Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? To the original, they don't. To a copy of it, made by someone else, why should the artist have any say over what other people do? If they don't want to be copied, don't put stuff out there. Just because you string a few words together, an intangible idea, it shouldn't give you some natural right to forbid other people from using those words in that same order.
- deciplex 11y ago
  How do you propose pricing the influence of existing copyrighted works on new works, without burdening artists to the point that human culture grinds to a halt? Also, you pay tax on land you own, you use public roads to get to work, walk on public sidewalks, use public parks, etc.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  ...somehow my right to something that I created that never existed before is subject to a social balancing? You already know that the answer to this is that once you've shared your creation with others, it's no longer yours. The copy that resides in their brains belongs to them. You cannot, without the artifice of copyright, claim ownership of pieces of others' brains, or what they later assemble from those pieces.
- tremon 11y ago
  > Why should society have any rights to an artistic creation? Because artists prefer to get paid. "Society" is the one paying the artist, so it should get something in return. And how much "society" is willing to pay depends on how much it gets in return. For example, "I" am willing to pay exactly zero for digital content that is still subject to license enforcement after purchase, but I'm willing to pay 40 euro for a one-time live performance. Sure, an artist can retain all rights to their artistic creation if they store the creation in their own basement. They can even leave it to their heirs in a will.
gnaritas 11y ago
> I've seen authors literally balk at the suggestion that they shouldn't have full control over their creations for perpetuity, and upon further digging, their point of view was that anything less is immoral, not just illegal. Their opinion is biased, of course they think that; they're wrong, but they're free to think that. Intellectual property is unnatural, allowing people to claim to own ideas forever is absurd.