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> Copyrights should be shorter You're going up against a big lobby. To do that you first need a functioning democracy. In a place where "the people" rule, cop

by cies 5y ago

> Copyrights should be shorter You're going up against a big lobby. To do that you first need a functioning democracy. In a place where "the people" rule, copyright'd be optimized to ensure a rich commons for everyone to enjoy. That was the original idea behind intellectual property law, e.g. copyright. Now it's big biz holding our culture for ransom.

google234123 5y ago
I don't think people care much about this issue and will focus more on issues that actually matter to them in a functioning democracy. E.g. taxes, health care, crime, education.
- saxonww 5y ago
  The counter-argument to this is that in a functioning democracy, people would actually have the ability to think about things like copyright, vs. scrambling to get adequate healthcare or education, while knowing their tax money would do meaningful things about crime instead of whatever they're doing now.
  - moonchrome 5y ago
    Your point seem to be a rant about US social policies and is easily disproved by the fact that similar copyright terms existing in Europe where those things aren't the same.
    - nextstep 5y ago
      They exist in Europe because of a similar corrupting mechanism; just because the European system hasn't completely dismantled their social systems the way the US is close to doesn't mean that democracy isn't also being weakened by capitalism.
    - witrak 5y ago
      AFAIK the European model is not as similar as you seem to be convinced. And the origin of copyright was from the beginning related not to the well-being of authors but rather publishers.
  - adventured 5y ago
    It's a flatly incorrect counter-argument. The majority of people that vote in the US and ultimately (if indirectly) determine such matters as copyright duration, are not scrambling for healthcare or education. That majority of voters rests well above the median in fact in both income and wealth. That's trivially demonstrated by the demographic, income and employment profiles of the majority of people that vote. You've made a sizable mistake in thinking that that majority of voters are interested in freeing Winnie the Pooh versus boosting their equity portfolio by padding the bottom line of Disney. The majority American voting profile is one of the wealthiest on the planet. You might reassess what you think their priorities are. This aspect isn't going to change, and no amount of wishing will make it so. The majority of US voters will continue to have a significant tilt toward their financial self-interest, which rests with Disney's bottomline and not with rapidly emptying Disney's copyright vault. Hint: look up the median and average white + asian household income and wealth figures these days (latest Fed household survey).
dahart 5y ago
> Now it’s big biz holding our culture for ransom. I hope we’re not talking about big-biz created works like Star Wars or Marvel movies being the culture that’s ransomed. We the people do have the power to create our own culture and commit any/all works to the public domain. A few people do this, but since we don’t have basic income or even great healthcare for people who spend months or years writing music, books, code, etc., a lot of creators do need the economic incentive and protection in order to commit their time.
- cies 5y ago
  Sure! That's what "good copyright" is for. But at some point Pooh/Mickey/etc become part of the public domain. That currently takes longer that I think is necessary to pay the artists, and largely in place to pay shareholder dividends of the big corps owing the intellectual property (IP). It in then my artistic freedom to equate IP with culture and consider the really long expiry times "holding ransom".
  - dahart 5y ago
    I think copyrights are too long. But, devil’s advocate, I haven’t heard a super convincing argument as to why something I make should ever revert to public domain, especially while I’m alive. Why shouldn’t I have the right to take my work to my grave and never have someone else profit from it? (Not saying I advocate this; I don’t. I’m just asking for a more clear argument as to why the public should be able to co-opt some IP and call it “culture” just because it got popular and/or profitable.)
    - cies 5y ago
      > Why shouldn’t I have the right to take my work to my grave and never have someone else profit from it? You have! Then just don't publish/share/release it. Take it physically to your grave. Once you publish it, I also have the "natural ability" to record it. Copyright limits my ability to record/reuse what I technically can by what is allowed. Copyright, and other IP rights have been sold as to give the original creators some head start which would make investing in such works more easy, in the end leading to a more rich commons for everyone.
einpoklum 5y ago
> That was the original idea behind intellectual property law, It really wasn't. It was printer biz holding culture for ransom with government backing, right from the start.
- cies 5y ago
  Ok, maybe then that was how it was sold (and I meant "intellectual property" in general, that was not clear, sorry).
dionidium 5y ago
I really wouldn't be so sure about this. Recently, Matthew Yglesias said something on twitter about excessive copyright terms and you should have seen the responses from writers, their fanbases, and (more generally) people who have never really thought much about the issue. There is a deep intuition in our culture that creators own their works completely and forever. "Copyrights are about incentives" may be literally true, historically, but that's definitely not how regular people view this issue. They're entirely on the side of the "big lobby" you describe and they think anybody who disagrees is trying to steal food from the mouths of artists. Yglesias deletes his tweets, but if you search "yglesias copyright" on twitter you can find some of the blowback, which basically boils down to, "creators live off the rights to their works, so if you change copyright, you're taking money away from artists and that's illegitimate." Here's one such popular thread: https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1367291186164109312 https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1367291186164109312 "The people," it seems, are copyright maximalists.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Please repeat after me: Twitter isn't real. Twitter isn't real. Twitter isn't real. Twitter doesn't represent a valid pool of actual human thoughts and opinions, no matter how many accounts appear to be involved or how passionately they're smashing their keyboards. Twitter is hot takes and outrage sprinkled with a little positivity now and then, but it's a tap into the most irrational and rapid fire mode of conversation. It's not reflecting real, considered opinions. Basing legislative or political opinions on Twitter trends is bonkers. If someone's knowledge about a subject consists of their feelings and 280 characters, their opinion is worthless. The other 99%+ of people that either aren't on Twitter or choose not to tweet means that Twitter isn't real. It doesn't mean that Twitter isn't useful or a valid source of data about Twitter users that tweet, it just means that in the context of public opinion in the real world, you're missing 99% or more of data relevant to the question.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    >Twitter is hot takes and outrage sprinkled with a little positivity now and then, but it's a tap into the most irrational and rapid fire mode of conversation. It's not reflecting real, considered opinions. Basing legislative or political opinions on Twitter trends is bonkers. Exactly, trying to use Twitter as a cross-section of the public is absolute insanity. Twitter isn't a good place for nuanced opinion at all, in fact the very nature of microblogging means it's the exact opposite of nuance. Twitter is great if you want to promote the kind of black-and-white thinking of the witch hunter or the Puritan moraliser and it's pretty much useless for anything else. Twitter is a net negative for society in my opinion, as a platform it actively makes the world a worse place to inhabit through its harmful influence on politics and journalism. It's not a matter of liking the opinions on Twitter, it's how the platform delivers those opinions. There's very little worth saying on any of the issues of the day that can be compressed into 280 characters. This causes all kinds of problems from the trivial (people spelling like literal children) to the really worrying (the fast-paced nature of such a platform has awful consequences for journalism).

by cies 5y ago

google234123 5y ago

I don't think people care much about this issue and will focus more on issues that actually matter to them in a functioning democracy. E.g. taxes, health care, crime, education.

saxonww 5y ago
The counter-argument to this is that in a functioning democracy, people would actually have the ability to think about things like copyright, vs. scrambling to get adequate healthcare or education, while knowing their tax money would do meaningful things about crime instead of whatever they're doing now.
- moonchrome 5y ago
  Your point seem to be a rant about US social policies and is easily disproved by the fact that similar copyright terms existing in Europe where those things aren't the same.
  - nextstep 5y ago
    They exist in Europe because of a similar corrupting mechanism; just because the European system hasn't completely dismantled their social systems the way the US is close to doesn't mean that democracy isn't also being weakened by capitalism.
  - witrak 5y ago
    AFAIK the European model is not as similar as you seem to be convinced. And the origin of copyright was from the beginning related not to the well-being of authors but rather publishers.
- adventured 5y ago
  It's a flatly incorrect counter-argument. The majority of people that vote in the US and ultimately (if indirectly) determine such matters as copyright duration, are not scrambling for healthcare or education. That majority of voters rests well above the median in fact in both income and wealth. That's trivially demonstrated by the demographic, income and employment profiles of the majority of people that vote. You've made a sizable mistake in thinking that that majority of voters are interested in freeing Winnie the Pooh versus boosting their equity portfolio by padding the bottom line of Disney. The majority American voting profile is one of the wealthiest on the planet. You might reassess what you think their priorities are. This aspect isn't going to change, and no amount of wishing will make it so. The majority of US voters will continue to have a significant tilt toward their financial self-interest, which rests with Disney's bottomline and not with rapidly emptying Disney's copyright vault. Hint: look up the median and average white + asian household income and wealth figures these days (latest Fed household survey).

dahart 5y ago

> Now it’s big biz holding our culture for ransom. I hope we’re not talking about big-biz created works like Star Wars or Marvel movies being the culture that’s ransomed. We the people do have the power to create our own culture and commit any/all works to the public domain. A few people do this, but since we don’t have basic income or even great healthcare for people who spend months or years writing music, books, code, etc., a lot of creators do need the economic incentive and protection in order to commit their time.

cies 5y ago
Sure! That's what "good copyright" is for. But at some point Pooh/Mickey/etc become part of the public domain. That currently takes longer that I think is necessary to pay the artists, and largely in place to pay shareholder dividends of the big corps owing the intellectual property (IP). It in then my artistic freedom to equate IP with culture and consider the really long expiry times "holding ransom".
- dahart 5y ago
  I think copyrights are too long. But, devil’s advocate, I haven’t heard a super convincing argument as to why something I make should ever revert to public domain, especially while I’m alive. Why shouldn’t I have the right to take my work to my grave and never have someone else profit from it? (Not saying I advocate this; I don’t. I’m just asking for a more clear argument as to why the public should be able to co-opt some IP and call it “culture” just because it got popular and/or profitable.)
  - cies 5y ago
    > Why shouldn’t I have the right to take my work to my grave and never have someone else profit from it? You have! Then just don't publish/share/release it. Take it physically to your grave. Once you publish it, I also have the "natural ability" to record it. Copyright limits my ability to record/reuse what I technically can by what is allowed. Copyright, and other IP rights have been sold as to give the original creators some head start which would make investing in such works more easy, in the end leading to a more rich commons for everyone.

einpoklum 5y ago

> That was the original idea behind intellectual property law, It really wasn't. It was printer biz holding culture for ransom with government backing, right from the start.

cies 5y ago
Ok, maybe then that was how it was sold (and I meant "intellectual property" in general, that was not clear, sorry).

dionidium 5y ago

I really wouldn't be so sure about this. Recently, Matthew Yglesias said something on twitter about excessive copyright terms and you should have seen the responses from writers, their fanbases, and (more generally) people who have never really thought much about the issue. There is a deep intuition in our culture that creators own their works completely and forever. "Copyrights are about incentives" may be literally true, historically, but that's definitely not how regular people view this issue. They're entirely on the side of the "big lobby" you describe and they think anybody who disagrees is trying to steal food from the mouths of artists. Yglesias deletes his tweets, but if you search "yglesias copyright" on twitter you can find some of the blowback, which basically boils down to, "creators live off the rights to their works, so if you change copyright, you're taking money away from artists and that's illegitimate." Here's one such popular thread: https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1367291186164109312 https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1367291186164109312 "The people," it seems, are copyright maximalists.

robbedpeter 5y ago
Please repeat after me: Twitter isn't real. Twitter isn't real. Twitter isn't real. Twitter doesn't represent a valid pool of actual human thoughts and opinions, no matter how many accounts appear to be involved or how passionately they're smashing their keyboards. Twitter is hot takes and outrage sprinkled with a little positivity now and then, but it's a tap into the most irrational and rapid fire mode of conversation. It's not reflecting real, considered opinions. Basing legislative or political opinions on Twitter trends is bonkers. If someone's knowledge about a subject consists of their feelings and 280 characters, their opinion is worthless. The other 99%+ of people that either aren't on Twitter or choose not to tweet means that Twitter isn't real. It doesn't mean that Twitter isn't useful or a valid source of data about Twitter users that tweet, it just means that in the context of public opinion in the real world, you're missing 99% or more of data relevant to the question.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  >Twitter is hot takes and outrage sprinkled with a little positivity now and then, but it's a tap into the most irrational and rapid fire mode of conversation. It's not reflecting real, considered opinions. Basing legislative or political opinions on Twitter trends is bonkers. Exactly, trying to use Twitter as a cross-section of the public is absolute insanity. Twitter isn't a good place for nuanced opinion at all, in fact the very nature of microblogging means it's the exact opposite of nuance. Twitter is great if you want to promote the kind of black-and-white thinking of the witch hunter or the Puritan moraliser and it's pretty much useless for anything else. Twitter is a net negative for society in my opinion, as a platform it actively makes the world a worse place to inhabit through its harmful influence on politics and journalism. It's not a matter of liking the opinions on Twitter, it's how the platform delivers those opinions. There's very little worth saying on any of the issues of the day that can be compressed into 280 characters. This causes all kinds of problems from the trivial (people spelling like literal children) to the really worrying (the fast-paced nature of such a platform has awful consequences for journalism).