5 ms·

If copyright lasted (say) a year or two - maybe. But even then, it's a terrible tool with huge social costs and limited upside. In any sane world, given the inc

by emn13 8y ago

If copyright lasted (say) a year or two - maybe. But even then, it's a terrible tool with huge social costs and limited upside. In any sane world, given the increased pace of information exchange and cultural change, copyright terms should have decreased over the years. That's not exactly what happened, now is it? It's completely laughable to assume human culture would cease to develop in the absence of copyright; which is essentially it's stated aim. Evidence: the entirety of human history. The idea wasn't the brightest from the get go: this was lawmakers simply trying to be too clever. But what bothers me most is the framing of "authors of a creative piece of work should have the right to protect their work"; when in fact it means "anybody or any organisation who made even rudimentary changes to almost any kind information can limit the rights of every other human on the planet". It's an absurdly blunt regulatory tool that's eminently vulnerable to regulatory capture, and oh hey; that actually happened many times over the centuries - and not just in terms of durations; it was expanded to corporations; penalties became more severe; exclusions were reduced; scope crept in the form of anti-circumvention measures; reach expanded by population growth and international cooperation. Copyright and derivative laws in its modern form has to be up there as one of the worst forms of regulation, with huge economic and social costs, yet no good way out and no practical sunset clauses because of extremely entrenched habits and vested interests.

dtech 8y ago
Copyright is there to help the creation of new works. Why should an author write a book or a studio produce a movie if literally everyone can freely copy it? (i.e. Book printers, DVD producers, Cinema's wouldn't have to pay the original producers). Producing creative work would be economically unviable. That said, that's also its only justification, and current terms have long reached beyond that. There isn't a book that wasn't written in 1923 because it would be freely available in 2004, and if we shortened terms to 50 years it would have zero effect on the production of new works. Not a movie less will be made because its copyright expires in 2068 instead of 21xx.
- pmontra 8y ago
  10 years would be enough. Every single movie, book, song created this year would still be here if its copyright would expire in 2028.
- isostatic 8y ago
  That argument was blown out of the water when copyright started to be retroactively extended.
- emn13 8y ago
  And it's really much worse than that. The aim should never be for maximum production of IP "at all costs" - it should be for maximum benefit at minimum cost. So if an IP horizon of (say) 30 years started to make a tiny but measurable impact on the kind of IP produced - then that's a sign that 30 years is likely waaaay too long! because the benefits are virtually nil, yet the costs are huge - not just culturally, but even economically, due to lack of competition (being an exclusionary right and all). Not to mention there's this straw-man that the alternative to copyright is assumed to implicitly be a complete free-for all. I mean you could think up at least a dozen alternatives - like region limited copyrights; mandatory limited-price licensing; copyrights only for human beings, not legal entities; continually rising registration costs; production subsidies; citation and consumption based subsidies; retrospective rewards based on popular vote or a council of experts, etc etc etc - and you could easily use many of those ideas simultaneously - potentially including a very short old-style copyright term. Also, technology has advanced somewhat since copyright came to be. Numerical models that would have been heinously impractical hundreds of years ago may now be trivially practical; i.e. accounting for each and every consumer of a piece of art may now actually be practical. TL;DR: If society wants to support creators even at the cost to others - an entirely reasonable aim - it's a fallacy to compare copyright-as-is-today to anarchy.
Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
> copyright terms should have decreased over the years. That's not exactly what happened, now is it? I agree they should decrease and even said so in my post. > It's completely laughable to assume human culture would cease to develop in the absence of copyright. I didn't say it would and I don't believe it would either, but personally I believe if we got rid of all copyright laws tomorrow it would do more harm to smaller creatives than it would to the large corporate media outlets. > anybody or any organisation who made even rudimentary changes to almost any kind information can limit the rights of every other human on the planet If that is the case then you can take the source material they made changes to and base your work off that. Lets take Snow White as an example. I believe Disney currently still have copyright on their adaptation of the 19th century fairly tale (as the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" film came out in 1937). But as the original source material is in the public domain so you can take that original source material and adapt it for your own creation. > it was expanded to corporations; penalties became more severe; exclusions were reduced; scope crept in the form of anti-circumvention measures; reach expanded by population growth and international cooperation. These can be lowered (or expanded in the cause of exclusions) without having to remove the protection completely. I do believe the current system has flaws (I'm against the rules that prohibit users breaking DRM esp when it is for their own use, for being able to transcode media from one format to another for example). But as I said I am against removing all the protections outright.
- stormbrew 8y ago
  > I believe Disney currently still have copyright on their adaptation of the 19th century fairly tale (as the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" film came out in 1937). But as the original source material is in the public domain so you can take that original source material and adapt it for your own creation. This is technically true, but in practice the effort necessary to avoid infringing on Disney's parts of things has a really clear chilling effect on derivative use of the original public domain work. Really only other large corporations with deep pockets for ip lawyers can afford to even risk it.
  - Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
    Ignoring that was just an example of adapting the source material. There have been many adaptations of Snow White which have not been produced by Disney which have seen 0 legal issues from Disney.

by emn13 8y ago

dtech 8y ago

Copyright is there to help the creation of new works. Why should an author write a book or a studio produce a movie if literally everyone can freely copy it? (i.e. Book printers, DVD producers, Cinema's wouldn't have to pay the original producers). Producing creative work would be economically unviable. That said, that's also its only justification, and current terms have long reached beyond that. There isn't a book that wasn't written in 1923 because it would be freely available in 2004, and if we shortened terms to 50 years it would have zero effect on the production of new works. Not a movie less will be made because its copyright expires in 2068 instead of 21xx.

pmontra 8y ago
10 years would be enough. Every single movie, book, song created this year would still be here if its copyright would expire in 2028.
isostatic 8y ago
That argument was blown out of the water when copyright started to be retroactively extended.
emn13 8y ago
And it's really much worse than that. The aim should never be for maximum production of IP "at all costs" - it should be for maximum benefit at minimum cost. So if an IP horizon of (say) 30 years started to make a tiny but measurable impact on the kind of IP produced - then that's a sign that 30 years is likely waaaay too long! because the benefits are virtually nil, yet the costs are huge - not just culturally, but even economically, due to lack of competition (being an exclusionary right and all). Not to mention there's this straw-man that the alternative to copyright is assumed to implicitly be a complete free-for all. I mean you could think up at least a dozen alternatives - like region limited copyrights; mandatory limited-price licensing; copyrights only for human beings, not legal entities; continually rising registration costs; production subsidies; citation and consumption based subsidies; retrospective rewards based on popular vote or a council of experts, etc etc etc - and you could easily use many of those ideas simultaneously - potentially including a very short old-style copyright term. Also, technology has advanced somewhat since copyright came to be. Numerical models that would have been heinously impractical hundreds of years ago may now be trivially practical; i.e. accounting for each and every consumer of a piece of art may now actually be practical. TL;DR: If society wants to support creators even at the cost to others - an entirely reasonable aim - it's a fallacy to compare copyright-as-is-today to anarchy.

Crosseye_Jack 8y ago

> copyright terms should have decreased over the years. That's not exactly what happened, now is it? I agree they should decrease and even said so in my post. > It's completely laughable to assume human culture would cease to develop in the absence of copyright. I didn't say it would and I don't believe it would either, but personally I believe if we got rid of all copyright laws tomorrow it would do more harm to smaller creatives than it would to the large corporate media outlets. > anybody or any organisation who made even rudimentary changes to almost any kind information can limit the rights of every other human on the planet If that is the case then you can take the source material they made changes to and base your work off that. Lets take Snow White as an example. I believe Disney currently still have copyright on their adaptation of the 19th century fairly tale (as the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" film came out in 1937). But as the original source material is in the public domain so you can take that original source material and adapt it for your own creation. > it was expanded to corporations; penalties became more severe; exclusions were reduced; scope crept in the form of anti-circumvention measures; reach expanded by population growth and international cooperation. These can be lowered (or expanded in the cause of exclusions) without having to remove the protection completely. I do believe the current system has flaws (I'm against the rules that prohibit users breaking DRM esp when it is for their own use, for being able to transcode media from one format to another for example). But as I said I am against removing all the protections outright.

stormbrew 8y ago
> I believe Disney currently still have copyright on their adaptation of the 19th century fairly tale (as the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" film came out in 1937). But as the original source material is in the public domain so you can take that original source material and adapt it for your own creation. This is technically true, but in practice the effort necessary to avoid infringing on Disney's parts of things has a really clear chilling effect on derivative use of the original public domain work. Really only other large corporations with deep pockets for ip lawyers can afford to even risk it.
- Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
  Ignoring that was just an example of adapting the source material. There have been many adaptations of Snow White which have not been produced by Disney which have seen 0 legal issues from Disney.