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Canada extends copyright protection another 20 years to meet trade obligation
- visarga 4y agoI'm wondering what will copyright mean after 20y of generative AI.
- version_five 4y agoGenerative AI is only the latest blow to copyright. Initiatives like this are just the death throwes of companies who know their business model is outdated, trying to extract a last little bit of rent before the music stops.
- ale42 4y agoI'd first want to see generative AI trained on 100% non-copyrighted (or properly licensed for the purpose) works. I'm pretty sure that copyright laws will be adapted in the next years to cover AI/training usage, so people will need proper licensing for that. Not saying that copyright is good or bad or anything else, that's just my intuition about the next years...
- gumballindie 4y agoExcellent. “People” are also folks with mortgages and kids - they need their work protected instead of looted by corporations. Similarly, open source code needs licensing honoured. This way there will be an incentive to pay those who’s intellect is used for training machine learning. A win win situation.
- version_five 4y ago"People" aren't owed an unstainable business model by society any more than companies are. Taxing everybody else with copyright rules is not a clear net benefit for society.
- davemp 4y ago> "People" aren't owed an unstainable business model by society any more than companies are. True. But society needs to align incentives with its desired outputs. If original work and creativity just makes other folks (entrenched middlemen) rich, we’ll see stagnation. With capital likely determining even more than before. If a pursuit can’t make money, it becomes a luxury with all the implications involved.
- regularfry 4y agoI'm sure we'll see something trained only on out-of-copyright visuals soon enough. Licensing is a red herring.
- mschuster91 4y agoA team actually brute-force generated all 68 billions of possible melody combinations for 12 notes in the middle-C octave set back in 2020 [1], essentially trolling/breaking the copyright law as now all these melodies are in the public domain as prior art. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/whats-the-point-of-writing-every-possible-melody/607120/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/whats...
- greatgib 4y agoTerrible how commercial lobbies are now able to hurt populations like that so easily to defend their own interests with very little oversight. It is not like a decision of the citizens that was debated in an assembly, just we do things because they were decided in secret international meetings or corrupted politicians.
- gwright 4y ago> Mr. Geist also accused the government of burying the change, by putting it near the bottom of a nearly 450-page budget bill last spring. The government didn’t highlight the copyright act changes in any of its documents about that bill. So it looks like it was "debated" in an assembly. I'm using scare quotes because I'm not a big fan of burying potentially controversial changes in giant budget bills. I'm also not a fan of giant budget bills or giant bills at all for that matter.
- boxed 4y agoIt's weird to me that the budget of a government is a bill at all. A budget is a budget, and a law is a law.
- citizenkeen 4y agoWho should decide how things are spent? My wife and I vote on our personal budget all the time.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI think their point is the budget should be passed seperate from any other laws. You don't say "we'll splurge on this vacation only if we agree to split washing the dishes. It's both or neither."
- afterburner 4y agoWhy do you imagine that non-budget-related issues must be packaged with the budget into the same bill? Parliament may pass as many bills as it has time to.
- Mandatum 4y agoFuck you, Sincerely, The Commonwealth. I guess Micky is getting his pound of flesh in Commonwealth countries later this year.
- unmole 4y agoMost countries that inherited the Imperial Copyright Act extended the copyright term via national legislations decades ago. Canada and New Zealand were notable exceptions. New Zealand did sign a FTA with the UK promising to increase the copyright term but it hasn't happened yet. I feel emotionally invested in this because if the New Zealand Parliament doesn't pass the legislation this year, Tolkien will be out of copyright next year.
- StrangeATractor 4y agoIt's a 4D gambit, think of all the lotr movies that will get filmed there without copyright restrictions.
- unmole 4y agoBut I don't think they will be able to call them LoTR movies. Trademarks can be perpetual.
- yellowapple 4y agoJust call it "King of the Rings", starring John Cena as Frodo.
- henriquez 4y ago“Trade obligations” aka international corporations elevating their interests beyond the state sovereignty level.
- morkalork 4y agoWelcome to Canada, where successive governments lie down and let foreign interests walk all over them like a doormat. If you want to be disgusted by more "trade obligations", check out what was in FIPA.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dmbche 4y agoI wasn't able to get to the article for not being a subscriber, but from looking around the web it seems Canada now has a 70 year past the year of death of the author copyright law, just like the US. And not retroactive - anything in the public domain prior to dec. 2021 remains in there.
- goosedragons 4y agoYes, because the US forced it as a condition for the new NAFTA. Very few changes between the two except crap like this. I can't even imagine the mess it being retroactive would have caused.
- account42 4y ago> anything in the public domain prior to dec. 2021 remains in there. It's still a retroactive extension for works from authors who died 50-70 years ago.
- kevincox 4y agoThose dead authors are really going to be inspired to create more.
- mmphosis 4y agoI hit ⌘RAC (Reload Select-All Copy) enough times to copy the text to the clipboard and pasted into a text editor.
- FpUser 4y ago>"Canada will continue to do its part to protect the interests of artists, creators and rights holders, while continuing to balance the needs of industry" They could have just put "the needs of industry" as the real reason and spare us of their weasel rhetorics.
- dghughes 4y agoNot even needs it's wants.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- potamic 4y agoPlausible deniability is often, an effective tactic.
- FpUser 4y agoThere is nothing plausible about it here. As for "effective" - I am sure it works well for a single cell species.
- masfuerte 4y agoThey don't even pretend to give a toss about the rights of the public.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bryanrasmussen 4y agowhat model does Canada, and presumably other commonwealth nations follow? I suppose it is the same model as the U.S where the purpose of copyright is to foster innovation? That would also explain why it took so long to implement these changes, since this kind of thing seems to go against the purpose of copyright under the 'Innovation' model.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoCanada has not much innovation to speak of as the populace is intensely risk averse.
- MSFT_Edging 4y agoI'm a firm believer that copyright and estate ownership should only extend to the direct descendant of the artist. No selling estates rights, no letting the great grandkid coast on the ideas of their great grandfather. Copyright is to protect the artist, not landlords.
- isitmadeofglass 4y ago[dead]
- mschuster91 4y ago> Copyright is to protect the artist, not landlords. But... but Big Mouse!!! /s Personally, I'd cut the line even closer, for patents and all other forms of intellectual property with the exception of trademarks: 10 years should be more than enough to make back R&D / IP development cost. And no more "software patents" either, same for all kinds of patents without a concrete, working implementation. No more hoarding of ideas to stifle competition. And if you're not actively using or fairly licensing your patents for a year, instant revocation.
- MSFT_Edging 4y agoI was trying to play the middle to make folks happy but in general I have zero respect for the industry of IP and really enjoy seeing what comes out of Chinese Shanzai culture. Rather than a handful of worse products protected by a copyright, the rapid pivoting by copying and improving has made a lot of cool tech. The nature of disrespecting copyrights also allows for niche products to be made for smaller consumer bases, compared to the focus group driven "jack of all trades master of none" products that you see when copyright is stronger. A few months back I was trying to reverse engineer a small Chinese bluetooth tx/rx device and found myself on the chinese side of the internet. I found many sites/blogs that only did teardowns of consumer devices, analyzing design choices, identifying and sharing datasheets normally kept behind NDAs, etc. These were datasheets of chinese origin mind you. The openness of information was refreshing because on the english internet, all I could find was press releases with pictures of young couples enjoying their individual bluetooth headphones. If you're a western engineer and want to make a bluetooth device, you're stuck with a handful of vendors who protect their IP to the extent it makes market research impossible. If you're a Chinese engineer, you've got a bunch of custom ready-to-go chips for various purposes. Yeah the range or quality wont be as good but design start to finish is far quicker.
- walterbell 4y agoYouTube channel with publicly-funded restorations of Canadian content was deleted, https://playbackonline.ca/2022/11/21/cmf-to-shutter-cancon-youtube-channel-encore/ https://playbackonline.ca/2022/11/21/cmf-to-shutter-cancon-y... > The channel had nearly 200,000 subscribers and more than 50 million views ... Over 3,000 pieces of Canadian content were digitized and restored through the project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Media_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Media_Fund > The fund is composed of contributions made by Canadian broadcasting... and the federal government. It funds roughly $750 million annually... On November 17 and 18, 2022, official platforms announced that after more than five years of availability, the service... was to shut down on November 30th. All media was wiped from both YouTube channels on that date, and the Twitter account and Facebook page with lists of content and discussion were made unavailable. That was six months ago, content has not (yet?) been published elsewhere, https://cmf-fmc.ca/news/encore-to-explore-new-avenues/ https://cmf-fmc.ca/news/encore-to-explore-new-avenues/ > made possible through a collaborative effort between CMF teams and the industry (Telefilm, unions and guilds, producers, creators, distributors, etc). In total, the project helped preserve our cultural heritage by digitizing and restoring over 3,000 pieces of content that directly contributed to Canada’s audiovisual legacy. In addition, the project resulted in some global sales of the newly digitized Canadian content, new opportunities for fans to see older works that had not been available online, and renewed interest in the content and creators that the CMF (and former CTF) proudly funded. No indication where the content can be purchased. Not even a historical list of the content that was restored and digitized. One example of classic Canadian content was the 1990s TV series Traders, which won many awards and remains the best fictional treatment of investment banking, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traders_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traders_(TV_series) & https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115397/reviews https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115397/reviews
- charles_f 4y ago> an artistic work won’t join the public domain for the life of the author plus another 70 years. > "Canada will continue to do its part to protect the interests of artists, creators and rights holders, while continuing to balance the needs of industry" Well no, an artist's interests disappear the moment they die, this is only to protect the interests of the rights holders, most likely only the big ones. At least be straight about it.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoYou are failing to consider scarcity. For example, if the artist is 70 years and someone is thinking about buying the rights to their work, how long after death the work is protected is a big deal. In this example, if the copyright ended immediately upon the artist's death, then a lot of potential buyers may decide that it is worth it to just wait for the artist to die, and either not make an offer or make a much smaller offer than they would have under the current situation of 70 years after the death of the author.
- mharig 4y agoArtists have to make art, not shovel money.
- londons_explore 4y agoThis is an argument to simply not consider the date of death of an author at all. For example, 70 years since the work was first published seems reasonable. Then most people's descendants will see some revenue from dad's work, and there won't be a sudden cliff date, assuming dad produced works all through his life. An investor who buys the rights no longer has to consider the age and health status of the author while deciding how much the rights are worth.
- kevincox 4y agoI also like excluding the authors lifetime because it makes it easy to determine when works are public. There is no need to track down who the author is, if it has been around for X years it is now public. It gives a definite endtime.
- jmclnx 4y agoWhy don't the just say "you the people have no rights. Copyright lasts 10,000 years and that is it.". We all know this was pushed by the US Gov. where their motto should me "Pay our politicians, you get more bang for the buck, and it is legal".
- r12343a_19 4y agoBecause the trick is to boil the frog slowly. Even the most dense simpleton understands that having no rights means having no rights. But if you have some rights, starting next Tuesday, and the government keeps extending the start date, you have something to look up to. Of course, it will be postponed forever.
- clnq 4y ago> Even the most dense simpleton understands that having no rights means having no rights. I understand this is exaggerated, but I'm not sure it's true. Plenty of people argue all the time that taking away their own rights is not a problem: "if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about", "if you have nothing to hide, you don't need privacy", "we need to give up freedoms for a greater good", "the government knows best", "if the government is watching, everyone will behave better", "if you can't trust the government, who can you trust?", "the founding fathers didn't prescribe freedom X", "only terrorists need freedom Y" (like privacy), "if you give people too much freedom, they will abuse it", "if you don't like it, you can leave the country", and the pandemic favourite — "it's only temporary", despite ample evidence in history that temporary stripping of freedoms is almost never temporary. I don't know... I've heard too many self-sabotaging arguments for stripping away freedoms from ordinary people that perhaps I'm convinced a good chunk of "the most dense simpletons" would be fine with it. Maybe they'd champion it if the right political party proposed the removal of freedoms.
- nkjnlknlk 4y ago> and the pandemic favourite — "it's only temporary", despite ample evidence in history that temporary stripping of freedoms is almost never temporary. Which pandemic freedoms have not been restored? I'd argue we've moved on to pretending COVID does not exist any way.
- clcaev 4y agoCopyright should have renewals past a particular date (14 years?) with a renewal fee on an increasing level after. The primary value of a copyrighted work is not intrinsic, but rather comes from the integration of the work into everyday activity and culture.
- SkeuomorphicBee 4y agoAlso there should be increasing levels of archival and disclosure requirements: - before first renewal: no requirement. - first renewal: must provide a simple no-drm consumer-grade copy to an official archive (e.g. us library of Congress). - second renewal: provide masters/source-code/assets to the archive.
- baybal2 4y ago[dead]
- passwordoops 4y agoAs a Canadian, this is why I'm intimately invested in US politics. This is not a Canadian policy failure, but an American one that, due to our dependence on the US as our biggest ally and trading partner, Canada has to go along with
- tzs 4y agoThis raises Canada's copyright term to match that of the US, most of South America, most of Europe, Russia and most former USSR states, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and a few others.
- porkbeer 4y agoMore steps backward.
- sproketboy 4y ago[dead]
- kgbcia 4y agoIt's crazy , we can vote on HN , but we can't vote on these decisions as citizens. This is not democracy.