7 ms·

That's exactly why the argument is that copyright should be shorter, not non-existent. When you publish something, 99% of the time are that you are going to mak

by vlunkr 5y ago

That's exactly why the argument is that copyright should be shorter, not non-existent. When you publish something, 99% of the time are that you are going to make most of the profit in the first few years after release. If you're in the tiny percent that creates something that will last decades, then you'll probably get rich and successful enough that you won't need to extend the copyright any longer.

dahart 5y ago
> When you publish something, 99% of the time are that you are going to make most of the profit in the first few years after release This is true of big-biz movies, but not true of the many volumes of works by smaller creators, independent artists and smaller companies. Sometimes artists don’t enjoy success for decades, and then it happens long after their most influential work. And even when it is true, just because you make the “most” in the first year doesn’t mean the following years are inconsequential, right? The argument needs to be compelling as to why someone who wasn’t involved in the production of a work deserves to be able to take that income stream for themselves, and divert it away from the creator, without paying or creating anything themselves. I don’t hear that side of the argument.
- KeepFlying 5y ago
  If I published my own copy of a public domain work I'm not diverting the income stream away from the original creator's estate. Yes I'd be taking some income from it, but the descendants of the author are equally able to do the same. Framing it as of I'd be totally diverting income from the creator is disingenuous. Besides, I'd still be providing value by taking the time to publish the work and provide it to customers.
  - dahart 5y ago
    I wasn’t talking about taking copies from the public domain, it is you who’s being disingenuous. If I’m alive and I make something people pay for, why should you ever have the right to make and distribute copies of my work without paying me for it? Turn the “me” and “you” around and assume you created the work, and tell me why I should be able to profit from your work, how that is “providing value”?
- vlunkr 5y ago
  > Sometimes artists don’t enjoy success for decades, and then it happens long after their most influential work. I know there are notable examples of this, but they are notable because it's incredibly rare.
  - dahart 5y ago
    No it’s not. It frequently takes a long time for something unknown to get popular. There are thousands upon thousands of albums and artworks and books that didn’t get popular until a decade or two after they were made. Another example you might not be thinking of is software startups take 10 years to get going all the time, and their entire codebase is protected by copyright. That said, I’m still not hearing a particularly compelling reason why copyrights should revert. Regardless of how long it takes for something to get popular, why should your protections expire such that it becomes legal for me to wholesale copy something you made, and turn around and sell it as if it were mine?
    - zuminator 5y ago
      You're talking about inventors laboring a decade or two in obscurity. Not 95 years. By that time the money's been rolling in for three-quarters of a century, perhaps to the grandchildren, never having worked a day in their lives while others toil away for their benefit, simply because of a distant accident of birth. That's the cost of generational wealth. It persists because, by the rules of the money game, the current generation of workers is enslaved by the debt of wealth created in the past. Having said that, I do agree it's unrealistic to assume that that truly democratic institutions would abolish long copyrights. I think that the majority of people who are invested in this issue imagine that they are just one bestselling book away, one hit song away, one TikTok meme away, from being wealthy creators. The idea that someone else might re-upload and unfairly profit from their own habanero sauce snorting video, that they worked so hard to perfect, is anathema to them.
      - dahart 5y ago
        I have mentioned above I’m in favor of shortening copyrights. I have my reasons, but I’m also asking to hear more compelling and clearly stated reasons than “I want free stuff” or “it’d be better for everyone if things were free” or “it should be free because big media is already rich”. > I think that the majority of people who are invested in this issue imagine that they are just one bestselling book away […] The idea that someone else might re-upload and unfairly profit from their own habanero sauce snorting video, that they worked so hard to perfect, is anathema to them. I wouldn’t be quite so glib. The history of copyright, and the state of the debate today, is far more interesting than your assumptions here. First of all, the driving force behind updates to the copyright law in recent years is big business, not TikTok memers. Second, the economic sectors of Information (based on copyright protected code), and of Media and Entertainment (based on copyright protected artwork), are larger than utilities, construction, education, and corporate management combined, for example. This is a large and core part to our economy and not something that is primarily being discussed because of a few artists with little more than hopes and dollar signs in their eyes.
tptacek 5y ago
That logic doesn't work either. Companies that extract profits from IPR provide most of the foundation for financially compensating authors. Almost all of those businesses work on the same portfolio logic as startup investors do: most investments will fail, and the hits subsidize the investments in the duds. You don't know which is which up front. What you do to reduce profits on the hits will come out of the pockets of all authors, not just the superstars.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  This argument depends greatly on how much you're shortening copyright. Even if it went back to 30 years, I'm skeptical that it would impact it much. They may still sell, but I doubt publishers are being kept afloat by works that old. Even for the IPs that remain popular they do new things with them to keep the revenue coming.
- rpdillon 5y ago
  This logic works, as far as it goes. But it also suggests that there is a large body of work not worth publishing or otherwise capitalizing on that is trapped under IP protections. This a cost to society that is completely unaccounted for in the math folks tend to present when arguing for increased terms. There is a paper[0] that documents this effect to some degree, and it's overall high quality enough that I find the data presented and the reasoning behind it convincing. From their summary: > First, a random sample of more than 2000 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along with a random sample of almost 2000 songs available on new DVD’s. Copyright status correlates highly with absence from the Amazon shelf. Together with publishing business models, copyright law seems to deter distribution and diminish access. I think identifying and accounting for difficult-to-measure societal costs is key in pushing back on further copyright extensions. [0]: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works_Disappeared_-_Paul_Heald.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works...
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I don't support extensions to copyright and am open to supporting cutbacks to terms. The problem I have is with the logic that gets tossed around in these threads, like the idea that there's no point to maintaining copyright after the death of an author (as if the author was the one extracting value from the work in the first place, or that extraction had nothing to do with the compensation the author received), or that copyright is only meaningful to a few breakout hits (as if those hits and the hunt for more of them didn't subsidize all the rest of the authors). There's a real Chesterton's Fence thing happening in these discussions.

by vlunkr 5y ago

dahart 5y ago

> When you publish something, 99% of the time are that you are going to make most of the profit in the first few years after release This is true of big-biz movies, but not true of the many volumes of works by smaller creators, independent artists and smaller companies. Sometimes artists don’t enjoy success for decades, and then it happens long after their most influential work. And even when it is true, just because you make the “most” in the first year doesn’t mean the following years are inconsequential, right? The argument needs to be compelling as to why someone who wasn’t involved in the production of a work deserves to be able to take that income stream for themselves, and divert it away from the creator, without paying or creating anything themselves. I don’t hear that side of the argument.

KeepFlying 5y ago
If I published my own copy of a public domain work I'm not diverting the income stream away from the original creator's estate. Yes I'd be taking some income from it, but the descendants of the author are equally able to do the same. Framing it as of I'd be totally diverting income from the creator is disingenuous. Besides, I'd still be providing value by taking the time to publish the work and provide it to customers.
- dahart 5y ago
  I wasn’t talking about taking copies from the public domain, it is you who’s being disingenuous. If I’m alive and I make something people pay for, why should you ever have the right to make and distribute copies of my work without paying me for it? Turn the “me” and “you” around and assume you created the work, and tell me why I should be able to profit from your work, how that is “providing value”?
vlunkr 5y ago
> Sometimes artists don’t enjoy success for decades, and then it happens long after their most influential work. I know there are notable examples of this, but they are notable because it's incredibly rare.
- dahart 5y ago
  No it’s not. It frequently takes a long time for something unknown to get popular. There are thousands upon thousands of albums and artworks and books that didn’t get popular until a decade or two after they were made. Another example you might not be thinking of is software startups take 10 years to get going all the time, and their entire codebase is protected by copyright. That said, I’m still not hearing a particularly compelling reason why copyrights should revert. Regardless of how long it takes for something to get popular, why should your protections expire such that it becomes legal for me to wholesale copy something you made, and turn around and sell it as if it were mine?
  - zuminator 5y ago
    You're talking about inventors laboring a decade or two in obscurity. Not 95 years. By that time the money's been rolling in for three-quarters of a century, perhaps to the grandchildren, never having worked a day in their lives while others toil away for their benefit, simply because of a distant accident of birth. That's the cost of generational wealth. It persists because, by the rules of the money game, the current generation of workers is enslaved by the debt of wealth created in the past. Having said that, I do agree it's unrealistic to assume that that truly democratic institutions would abolish long copyrights. I think that the majority of people who are invested in this issue imagine that they are just one bestselling book away, one hit song away, one TikTok meme away, from being wealthy creators. The idea that someone else might re-upload and unfairly profit from their own habanero sauce snorting video, that they worked so hard to perfect, is anathema to them.
    - dahart 5y ago
      I have mentioned above I’m in favor of shortening copyrights. I have my reasons, but I’m also asking to hear more compelling and clearly stated reasons than “I want free stuff” or “it’d be better for everyone if things were free” or “it should be free because big media is already rich”. > I think that the majority of people who are invested in this issue imagine that they are just one bestselling book away […] The idea that someone else might re-upload and unfairly profit from their own habanero sauce snorting video, that they worked so hard to perfect, is anathema to them. I wouldn’t be quite so glib. The history of copyright, and the state of the debate today, is far more interesting than your assumptions here. First of all, the driving force behind updates to the copyright law in recent years is big business, not TikTok memers. Second, the economic sectors of Information (based on copyright protected code), and of Media and Entertainment (based on copyright protected artwork), are larger than utilities, construction, education, and corporate management combined, for example. This is a large and core part to our economy and not something that is primarily being discussed because of a few artists with little more than hopes and dollar signs in their eyes.

tptacek 5y ago

That logic doesn't work either. Companies that extract profits from IPR provide most of the foundation for financially compensating authors. Almost all of those businesses work on the same portfolio logic as startup investors do: most investments will fail, and the hits subsidize the investments in the duds. You don't know which is which up front. What you do to reduce profits on the hits will come out of the pockets of all authors, not just the superstars.

vlunkr 5y ago
This argument depends greatly on how much you're shortening copyright. Even if it went back to 30 years, I'm skeptical that it would impact it much. They may still sell, but I doubt publishers are being kept afloat by works that old. Even for the IPs that remain popular they do new things with them to keep the revenue coming.
rpdillon 5y ago
This logic works, as far as it goes. But it also suggests that there is a large body of work not worth publishing or otherwise capitalizing on that is trapped under IP protections. This a cost to society that is completely unaccounted for in the math folks tend to present when arguing for increased terms. There is a paper[0] that documents this effect to some degree, and it's overall high quality enough that I find the data presented and the reasoning behind it convincing. From their summary: > First, a random sample of more than 2000 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along with a random sample of almost 2000 songs available on new DVD’s. Copyright status correlates highly with absence from the Amazon shelf. Together with publishing business models, copyright law seems to deter distribution and diminish access. I think identifying and accounting for difficult-to-measure societal costs is key in pushing back on further copyright extensions. [0]: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works_Disappeared_-_Paul_Heald.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works...
- tptacek 5y ago
  I don't support extensions to copyright and am open to supporting cutbacks to terms. The problem I have is with the logic that gets tossed around in these threads, like the idea that there's no point to maintaining copyright after the death of an author (as if the author was the one extracting value from the work in the first place, or that extraction had nothing to do with the compensation the author received), or that copyright is only meaningful to a few breakout hits (as if those hits and the hunt for more of them didn't subsidize all the rest of the authors). There's a real Chesterton's Fence thing happening in these discussions.