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The same holds true for film and television as well; any twentieth century media really. It is a saddening state of affairs that we have the means to built and

The same holds true for film and television as well; any twentieth century media really. It is a saddening state of affairs that we have the means to built and maintain a global distributed digital library of Alexandria, but not the political will or legal means. The absurdly long copyright terms are too blame for most part. 2017 is strange in that there are not nearly as many ways of sharing our vast collective libraries of digital or digitized culture as five years ago (e.g., the fall of What.cd), despite a steady increase in storage and bandwidth. I wonder what will happen next? I'm not very hopeful about copyright reform though.

ghaff 10y ago
>The absurdly long copyright terms are too blame for most part. While I agree that copyright terms are too long, I'm not sure they're the primary villain here. A lot of what we're talking about are works from living artists dating to, say, the 1960s or more recently. That's not what people usually mean when they talk about absurdly long copyright terms. I agree about film and television. Increasingly, if it's not available on streaming, it doesn't exist. Netflix is letting their DVD back catalog decay to nothing. Which basically leaves Amazon DVD purchases. When something goes out of print, you're stuck with the used market. And if it's never made it to DVD, pretty much forget about it at this point.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  The 1960s were 50 years ago though — more than half a lifetime. That falls well outside of what I find a reasonable duration for copyright. Even a limit of 30 years (or perhaps the historical 14 + 14 years) would mean anything published before the 1980s would already be in the public domain by now. The article hints at the artist simply preferring people to forget some of his older work, and that is his prerogative. But once media takes root in our culture society has its own interests to defend. We would find it really weird to leave out certain works of Shakespeare from a comprehensive omnibus because he wasn't particularly fond of them himself. Copyright should balance the rights of the author and the needs of society; in its current form that balance is lost.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    >We would find it really weird to leave out certain works of Shakespeare from a comprehensive omnibus because he wasn't particularly fond of them himself. I agree up to a point. On the other hand, artists often destroy or leave instructions to have destroyed upon their death all manner of works (unpublished novels, paintings that were never fully finished to the artist's satisfaction) still in their possession that they aren't happy with or don't want to make public for whatever reason. I really hesitate to say that society has some right to those works that override the desires of their creator.
    - Freak_NL 10y ago
      Oh I don't think we disagree there; no one should be able to force someone to publish their works. But an artist (and their estate) shouldn't be able to retroactively banish any of their published works from society simply by holding on to their copyrights. Copyright is a deal made with society; you get to publish your work without fear of anyone else making a profit of it by simply copying your work, but for a limited time. After that it enters the public domain.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> It is a saddening state of affairs that we have the means to built and maintain a global distributed digital library of Alexandria, but not the political will or legal means. Heck, we don't even have the political will for building local, nondistributed versions, though we have most of the legal means in place (and long copyright terms actually don't hurt it at all.) All we really need is more legal teeth in the deposit requirement attached to copyright law, and we're there. "Timely deposit ormyou lose copyright protection", with no exceptions, and then the funding to support the resulting repository and make it accessible is all that is needed.
peatmoss 10y ago
Now that I think about it, I wonder if this is an area where technical & financial investment from a volunteer geek corp, plus librarians & libraries, could create something? I don't know enough about copyright and how they apply to libraries. It seems to me that they're the right repository for this kind of thing.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >I don't know enough about copyright and how they apply to libraries. It seems to me that they're the right repository for this kind of thing. Basically, libraries don't have any special rights with respect to copyright. However, because of first sale doctrine, any repository/library/archive can hold physical instances of a book, record/CD, TV show, or movie that they've bought.
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    Hmm... So format shifting for the purposes of digital archival are probably not something that public libraries would have any ability to do?
    - ghaff 10y ago
      That is more or less the only exemption that exists for archives and libraries [1]. But that does not mean that they can then make that content available beyond their walls. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
      - peatmoss 10y ago
        Even that seems like an improvement over status quo. Plus, having such an archive seems like the sort of thing that could be made irreversibly public should there ever be even a temporary rule change. I feel like some of our political will around copyright has eroded simply due to the fact that we're now habituating to a lessened degree of rights and access.
- 10y ago
corey_moncure 10y ago
>we have the means to built and maintain a global distributed digital library of Alexandria, but not the political will or legal means. The copyright problem is not how to ensure the incentive for artists to continue to create, although that is how the discourse is always framed. The problem is how to secure the incentive for consumers to continue spending money on increasingly banal drivel when there is a solid 400 years of music history at your fingertips. That's why What.cd had to be eliminated. It's not about artists. It's about rights-holders and their bottom line.

ghaff 10y ago

>The absurdly long copyright terms are too blame for most part. While I agree that copyright terms are too long, I'm not sure they're the primary villain here. A lot of what we're talking about are works from living artists dating to, say, the 1960s or more recently. That's not what people usually mean when they talk about absurdly long copyright terms. I agree about film and television. Increasingly, if it's not available on streaming, it doesn't exist. Netflix is letting their DVD back catalog decay to nothing. Which basically leaves Amazon DVD purchases. When something goes out of print, you're stuck with the used market. And if it's never made it to DVD, pretty much forget about it at this point.

Freak_NL 10y ago
The 1960s were 50 years ago though — more than half a lifetime. That falls well outside of what I find a reasonable duration for copyright. Even a limit of 30 years (or perhaps the historical 14 + 14 years) would mean anything published before the 1980s would already be in the public domain by now. The article hints at the artist simply preferring people to forget some of his older work, and that is his prerogative. But once media takes root in our culture society has its own interests to defend. We would find it really weird to leave out certain works of Shakespeare from a comprehensive omnibus because he wasn't particularly fond of them himself. Copyright should balance the rights of the author and the needs of society; in its current form that balance is lost.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >We would find it really weird to leave out certain works of Shakespeare from a comprehensive omnibus because he wasn't particularly fond of them himself. I agree up to a point. On the other hand, artists often destroy or leave instructions to have destroyed upon their death all manner of works (unpublished novels, paintings that were never fully finished to the artist's satisfaction) still in their possession that they aren't happy with or don't want to make public for whatever reason. I really hesitate to say that society has some right to those works that override the desires of their creator.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    Oh I don't think we disagree there; no one should be able to force someone to publish their works. But an artist (and their estate) shouldn't be able to retroactively banish any of their published works from society simply by holding on to their copyrights. Copyright is a deal made with society; you get to publish your work without fear of anyone else making a profit of it by simply copying your work, but for a limited time. After that it enters the public domain.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> It is a saddening state of affairs that we have the means to built and maintain a global distributed digital library of Alexandria, but not the political will or legal means. Heck, we don't even have the political will for building local, nondistributed versions, though we have most of the legal means in place (and long copyright terms actually don't hurt it at all.) All we really need is more legal teeth in the deposit requirement attached to copyright law, and we're there. "Timely deposit ormyou lose copyright protection", with no exceptions, and then the funding to support the resulting repository and make it accessible is all that is needed.

peatmoss 10y ago

Now that I think about it, I wonder if this is an area where technical & financial investment from a volunteer geek corp, plus librarians & libraries, could create something? I don't know enough about copyright and how they apply to libraries. It seems to me that they're the right repository for this kind of thing.

ghaff 10y ago
>I don't know enough about copyright and how they apply to libraries. It seems to me that they're the right repository for this kind of thing. Basically, libraries don't have any special rights with respect to copyright. However, because of first sale doctrine, any repository/library/archive can hold physical instances of a book, record/CD, TV show, or movie that they've bought.
- peatmoss 10y ago
  Hmm... So format shifting for the purposes of digital archival are probably not something that public libraries would have any ability to do?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    That is more or less the only exemption that exists for archives and libraries [1]. But that does not mean that they can then make that content available beyond their walls. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
    - peatmoss 10y ago
      Even that seems like an improvement over status quo. Plus, having such an archive seems like the sort of thing that could be made irreversibly public should there ever be even a temporary rule change. I feel like some of our political will around copyright has eroded simply due to the fact that we're now habituating to a lessened degree of rights and access.
10y ago

corey_moncure 10y ago

>we have the means to built and maintain a global distributed digital library of Alexandria, but not the political will or legal means. The copyright problem is not how to ensure the incentive for artists to continue to create, although that is how the discourse is always framed. The problem is how to secure the incentive for consumers to continue spending money on increasingly banal drivel when there is a solid 400 years of music history at your fingertips. That's why What.cd had to be eliminated. It's not about artists. It's about rights-holders and their bottom line.