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> Copyright also seems to be going fine. Unless copyright terms get shorter, they are not "fine". Even the status quo is not "fine". Life+50 years (or more) i

> Copyright also seems to be going fine. Unless copyright terms get shorter, they are not "fine". Even the status quo is not "fine". Life+50 years (or more) is ridiculously long: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright... If an artist can't re-coup their costs in, say, thirty years, they are bad at business side of things and should get out of the way to allow other creative people to build on their work. The novel Nightmare Alley was published in 1946, and the author died in 1962: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(novel) There's no reason why it should (AFAICT) still be under copyright such that royalties need to be paid to, e.g., turn it into a movie: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(2021_film)

izacus 4y ago
> If an artist can't re-coup their costs in, say, thirty years, they are bad at business side of things and should get out of the way to allow other creative people to build on their work. Can we get something straight? In vast majority of cases it's the massive content industry corporations that are doing the cost recouping here, not the artists themselves. Artists get tiny peanuts or even less if they weren't known enough to fight corporate lawyers of their own publisher. "Poor artists recouping their life work" is a nice PR message from publisher corporations to defend status quo though.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > In vast majority of cases it's the massive content industry corporations that are doing the cost recouping here, not the artists themselves. If Sony/Tri-Star hasn't re-couped the cost of making Terminator 2 by now… * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_film Or: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_music * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1991_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1991_books
randombits0 4y ago
Not to take you two steps back but copyright doesn’t really apply well to software to begin with. Consider this: Copyright applies only to creative expressions. Purely functional expressions are not copyrightable. That means that software is the embodiment of both creative and functional expressions that are commingled. They are so mixed together by the time the buyer gets it, there is no simple way of separating the two. That weakens the strength of copyright over the whole. It also misleads folks into believing everything about software is protected, even silly things like header files or trivial functions. Because these purely functional expressions are so highly intertwined with the rest, folks just assume they have a legitimate copyright over them! Even judges get this wrong! So software isn’t inherently copyrightable except for it any creative expressions it contains. What counts as creative expression? Traditionally, it didn’t take very much creative expression to be copyrightable. A screen design is copyrightable. A color scheme could be copyrightable. Code that saves a file after applying whatever edits the user has made is NOT copyrightable, as it is a purely functional expression. But what if I came up with a cool/fast way of finding primes and coded it into C. I created it. It is unique in the entire world! It took many hours to come up with. Certainly I should be able to protect my work, right? No. Mathematical algorithms are not creative expressions but purely functional expressions. It doesn’t matter how long it took to create or how the algorithm was discovered. But what about the code to implement the expression? The code is the expression of the algorithm. There may be a bit of creativity in the code, but we are back to functional expression as opposed to creative expression. Where’s the line? It’s fuzzy enough considering it in the abstract but impossible to consider given only the executable software itself. Personally, I think software should have it’s own copyright protections, unique from other written works. What that should look like and how it should work is an open question that should be discussed. Remember, the purpose of copyright is not to enrich the author. The purpose is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” If any copyright scheme fails to “promote the progress of science and useful arts”, it is not serving the public as intended.

izacus 4y ago

> If an artist can't re-coup their costs in, say, thirty years, they are bad at business side of things and should get out of the way to allow other creative people to build on their work. Can we get something straight? In vast majority of cases it's the massive content industry corporations that are doing the cost recouping here, not the artists themselves. Artists get tiny peanuts or even less if they weren't known enough to fight corporate lawyers of their own publisher. "Poor artists recouping their life work" is a nice PR message from publisher corporations to defend status quo though.

throw0101a 4y ago
> In vast majority of cases it's the massive content industry corporations that are doing the cost recouping here, not the artists themselves. If Sony/Tri-Star hasn't re-couped the cost of making Terminator 2 by now… * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_film Or: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_music * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1991_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1991_books

randombits0 4y ago

Not to take you two steps back but copyright doesn’t really apply well to software to begin with. Consider this: Copyright applies only to creative expressions. Purely functional expressions are not copyrightable. That means that software is the embodiment of both creative and functional expressions that are commingled. They are so mixed together by the time the buyer gets it, there is no simple way of separating the two. That weakens the strength of copyright over the whole. It also misleads folks into believing everything about software is protected, even silly things like header files or trivial functions. Because these purely functional expressions are so highly intertwined with the rest, folks just assume they have a legitimate copyright over them! Even judges get this wrong! So software isn’t inherently copyrightable except for it any creative expressions it contains. What counts as creative expression? Traditionally, it didn’t take very much creative expression to be copyrightable. A screen design is copyrightable. A color scheme could be copyrightable. Code that saves a file after applying whatever edits the user has made is NOT copyrightable, as it is a purely functional expression. But what if I came up with a cool/fast way of finding primes and coded it into C. I created it. It is unique in the entire world! It took many hours to come up with. Certainly I should be able to protect my work, right? No. Mathematical algorithms are not creative expressions but purely functional expressions. It doesn’t matter how long it took to create or how the algorithm was discovered. But what about the code to implement the expression? The code is the expression of the algorithm. There may be a bit of creativity in the code, but we are back to functional expression as opposed to creative expression. Where’s the line? It’s fuzzy enough considering it in the abstract but impossible to consider given only the executable software itself. Personally, I think software should have it’s own copyright protections, unique from other written works. What that should look like and how it should work is an open question that should be discussed. Remember, the purpose of copyright is not to enrich the author. The purpose is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” If any copyright scheme fails to “promote the progress of science and useful arts”, it is not serving the public as intended.