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If something is not legally available then copyright law ought to make it eligible for free distribution. The authors nor the rights owners certainly don't see

• JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Huh. If I own a Picasso and it's not for sale, then you should be able to take it? Strange argument on the face of it.
  • tail_exchange 3y ago
    The supply of Picassos are limited, since there is only one of each piece. Software and other digital medias don't have this constraint.
    • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      True. But to take and distribute freely somebody's copyrighted material is essentially taking all the value out of the material. Some similar in that way.
      • hyperhopper 3y ago
        Value? I don't get less enjoyment out of a video game because somebody else played it. In fact I might get even more enjoyment because of that since we could play it together or discuss it! So that means the value stays the same or even goes up in my book!
• rullelito 3y ago
  It could also be that I make a game, then a somewhat similar sequal, and I only want to sell the sequel. What right as a consumer do you have to distribute the first one for free then?
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    The question is missing the point the parent is making. Parent is saying that the purpose of IP is to, in the long run, benefit society. As a result, we have collectively agreed ( for various definitions of agreed -- I certainly think they are way too long ) that protecting author's works for a period of time is desirable. As such, after some time has passed, why does it not end up in the same category as old published books ( public domain )?
  • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    If the sequel isn't compelling it won't sell. It's a bad game series that relies on the first one being unavailable to sell the second.
  • feoren 3y ago
    We can decide to make laws based on the society that we all want to live in. If our objective is maximizing the amount of creative work available to society, it may make sense to say that creators of those works enjoy monopoly on the reproduction and sale of those works, but do not gain the right to deprive society of the works. Some minimum good-faith effort to actually publish the works is a perfectly reasonable requirement on copyright.
  • TheRealPomax 3y ago
    Is your company still up and running? No rights, unless the company explicitly voids the copyright. Did you go out of business but you didn't sell the copyright? No rights, unless you personally void the copyright. Did you die, but did you have (legal) heirs? No rights, because copyright is inherited. Are you a US citizen and you died without legal heirs? Still no rights, because (and this is the most insane one) your assets become state property and copyright is considered an asset. The only two ways consumers will be free to distribute that first game is either by the clock running out on the copyright, or by whoever is the copyright holder explicitly legally voiding the copyright before then.
  • Mordisquitos 3y ago
    > What right as a consumer do you have to distribute the first one for free then? What rights have you got to stop me from doing it?
• happymellon 3y ago
  Unfortunately the Disney vault works exactly this way. Generate pent up demand by refusing to sell a product, which is exactly how copyright works for them. I however agree with you and have no moral concerns if a company doesn't want to sell me a product.
  • chongli 3y ago
    Copyright is supposed to strike a balance between creators and the public. That balance has been so distorted as to be unrecognizable today. It needs a reset!
    • bo1024 3y ago
      Not to mention the outside influence and value captured by publishers and distributors (not creators).
      • kmeisthax 3y ago
        These are part and parcel of the same problem. Publishers want to strip creators of ownership as soon as possible because their back catalog is a pile of gold and they are the dragon using it as a makeshift bed. At their scale creative works are more valuable for the status they confer upon the company than for being an actual thing that they can sell. All of this is deliberate, of course. The copyright bargain we currently have today was struck in the 1970s - a time in which much creative work was a collaborative effort that practically had to be capitalistically owned by a for-profit corporation. Self-publishing was entirely a product of counter-culture, fan conventions[0], and vanity presses[1]. The only fig leaf to the notion of these being authors rights rather than just a weird kind of tradeable monopoly is rights reversion - a thing which publishers hate with the passion of God. [0] Yes, those actually did exist at this time. Remember: San Diego Comic-Con started in 1970 and Comiket in 1975. If you think that's old wait until I tell you about the historical Sherlock Holmes fandom! [1] I suspect this was a derisive term coined by large book publishers as a reaction to people who aided self-publishing artists.
• jlglover 3y ago
  Squatters rights for IP
• TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Aye, but instead the reality is that copyright can only expire by running out its term. If a company gets acquired, its copyrights get transfered to the new owner. If a company goes out of business, the copyright either gets sold to cover bankrupcy or becomes the property of the people who owned the company. If a person holding a copyright dies, it goes to their heir(s), and finally, if someone dies without heirs, it becomes state property in the US. The only way for a copyright to expire is either by running out its term, or by the current copyright holder voiding it. It's such a great system.
  • FreshStart 3y ago
    Should have a yearly renewal bureaucracy..
    • lamontcg 3y ago
      no.
      • FreshStart 3y ago
        We shall meet again, in a year and a day.
    • arsome 3y ago
      Not a bad idea - some entity must show legal ownership via chain of custody and make a claim every year, if they can't do so, it becomes public domain with an extra 1 year grace period or something.
    • TheRealPomax 3y ago
      No, it should be non-transferable (but commissionable, so that companies can still own copyright if they paid employees to generate works), have a fixed short term (say, 20 years), and should be voided when the copyright holder expires before the copyright itself expires.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      Corporations would love it. Disney isn't going to forget to renew a copyright. Many solo authors or their heirs would.
• mertd 3y ago
  Just playing the devil's advocate here but what if the copyright owner does not want the content distributed anymore? Maybe now they find the content distasteful or embarrassing.
  • criddell 3y ago
    Wu Tang Clan recorded an album and sold it to Martin Shkreli for $2 million (he no longer owns it). If I manage to get a copy of it, should I be able to distribute it freely?
    • xNeil 3y ago
      Yes. In fact, Shkreli promised to release the full album if Trump won 2016. I think he ended up releasing two tracks.
      • criddell 3y ago
        Depending on the contract, Shkreli may have those rights. I’m talking about if I managed to record a copy of the record would there be anything wrong with me distributing it?
  • aidenn0 3y ago
    The original term on copyright was 28 years maximum; under that rule, most copyrighted works would already be in the public domain. I think 28 years is probably closer to the "right value" than 95 years, but I'd be okay with a bit longer.
  • morsch 3y ago
    Maybe we should make it illegal to retell embarrassing stories without consent from the people involved.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Who cares what they want? I don't. Culture should belong to us, not them. Copyright exists to allow them to turn a tidy profit so they're properly incentivized. It's not there to enable their delusions of control nor their perpetual rent seeking. They've already turned their profit, now it's time for the works to enter the public domain. Nobody cares whether they like it or not, it's human culture and it belongs to us all.
• EatingWithForks 3y ago
  I would agree except for a few things. Like, if someone distributes pornography of themselves, and they are now a nurse or something and are out of the industry + don't want their images distributed anymore, I think distributing pornography of them against their permission just because they aren't distributing it themselves sounds extremely heinous.
  • lamontcg 3y ago
    That could be handled through entirely non-voidable personality/likeness rights instead of needing to be handled through copyright law.
    • sneak 3y ago
      As a photographer, I think I and I alone should be able to dictate what happens to the photos that I take. The idea that you can somehow control your image is insane. You can't forcibly control your reputation, why should you be able to forcibly control photographers who legally photograph you?
      • the-smug-one 3y ago
        I don't think it's insane. We can control our reputation slightly, through libel laws.
        • sneak 3y ago
          In the US, being factually accurate is an airtight defense against libel. Face it, you don't get to control what other people say about you, nor should you want to. (Whether that "saying" is gossip, in print, or photoshopping your face on to unsavory things.)
          • the-smug-one 3y ago
            In Sweden, it's not. I do think that it's reasonable to have certain expectations about what can be spread about you as a private person, regardless if the things said are true or not.
• sandworm101 3y ago
  >> If something is not legally available then copyright law ought to make it eligible for free distribution. Ok. Past Futurama episodes are now $10,000 per view. That is still available and not an absurd cost (just ask anyone dealing with with patented technology). So we would need some sort of commission to decide what a reasonable cost should be, which would be a quantum leap away from free market principals.
  • Snild 3y ago
    Compulsory/statutory licensing would be one solution. As I understand it, that's what allows libraries to exist. Music on the radio (at least here in Sweden) is handled through collective licensing, which is nominally optional, but practically impossible to avoid if you want any radio money. The incentive of exclusivity could be reasonably preserved by making the statutory license valid only after some amount of time has passed since release.
    • eesmith 3y ago
      > Compulsory/statutory licensing would be one solution. As I understand it, that's what allows libraries to exist. I don't think that's the case. At least, what allows libraries in the US is the "first-sale doctrine." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine , "The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works (for example, enabling individuals to sell their legally purchased books or CDs to others)." Something similar is why I can place an ad to sell my used Mac without violating Apple's trademark. I assume Sweden (and the EU) have something similar. If not, that makes second-hand book, magazine, or any product sales rather difficult.
      • Snild 3y ago
        I looked it up, and you are technically correct ("the best kind of correct"). https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P19S1 https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P19S1 > 19 § När ett exemplar av ett verk med upphovsmannens samtycke har överlåtits inom Europeiska ekonomiska samarbetsområdet, får exemplaret spridas vidare. Translated: > 19 § When a specimen, with the consent of the author, has been transferred within the European economic area, the specimen may be further transferred. The law goes on to carve out exceptions for computer programs and movies specifically, as well as renting generally -- those kinds of transfers are not allowed without author approval. However, in combination with Biblioteksersättningen/författarfonden ("the library compensation/author fund"), which collects money based on the amount of lending in public libraries and distributes it to authors, it comes pretty close to statutory licensing in practice. It's not immediately clear to me that the payout is proportionally divided, though, so depending on how that skews, I may be way off.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  If you wrote this into law, copyright holders would immediately put a notice on their website that a copy of any of their films/books/music/whatever is available for sale at a cost of $1M if you write a letter to their postal mail address. That would meet the law as "offered for sale". It's hard to write a law that says "offered for sale for a sensible price, in form the buyer desires, and without excessive hoops to jump through"
  • paulsutter 3y ago
    Some may, but honestly few would
  • aidenn0 3y ago
    This is not true for abandoned works, or works for which one cannot locate the copyright owner. The tiniest of hurdles to maintaining copyright could make a large amount of works available.
  • Eisenstein 3y ago
    > It's hard to write a law that says "offered for sale for a sensible price, in form the buyer desires, and without excessive hoops to jump through" No it isn't. "If the work is not offered in a manner that can be purchased reasonably in a manner conforming to industry standards unless (1) it is A (2) it is not A but is B..." Have you ever read a law?
• kube-system 3y ago
  This idea presumes you're talking about copyrighted mass media which was distributed widely, which is only a small subset of copyrighted material. A very large amount of copyrighted material is never distributed, or is very limited in distribution to begin with.
  • thriftwy 3y ago
    If it was ever published as a mass media (with a price tag), then it should be treated as mass media.
  • therealpygon 3y ago
    True, but it isn’t a difficult distinction to make. The entire point of laws are to make distinctions.
  • floomk 3y ago
    So what value does that give society?
    • kube-system 3y ago
      Privacy. I have the right to make something, not share it, and prevent others from sharing it without my permission. Or I may share it only with those who I choose to share it with.
      • floomk 3y ago
        That's fine, just don't share it. If you don't intend to use it commercially you do not deserve commercial protections.
        • kube-system 3y ago
          Strong disagree. If I choose not to share something today, I do deserve, at a minimum: 1. the right to commercially share it later 2. the right to prevent others from commercially sharing it without my permission 3. the right to share my creations with a limited group of people, commercially or non-commercially Say for instance, you share a creative work with someone in confidence. They should not have the right to freely copy and publish your work without your permission. It is very common for people to create works which are private and or shared with small groups of people, and it is important for our laws to protect people's rights to keep those works private or semi-private. Or to put it another way, a 'leak' of a private work shouldn't be a free pass for the rest of the world to share and/or monetize that breach of privacy.
• mormegil 3y ago
  A similar (albeit weaker) regime already exists in the EU for "orphan works", i.e. works for which copyright holder(s) cannot be found or contacted. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work
  • moomin 3y ago
    Then there’s the hilarious case of No One Lives Forever, a well regarded game from 2000, where the ownership rights are murky with several organisations willing to say on the record that they have no idea if they own it, that they have no intention of finding out, but that if anyone attempts to resurrect the games they will find out and sue.
  • cubefox 3y ago
    Interesting: > Whether orphaned software and video games ("Abandonware") fall under the audiovisual works definition is a matter debated by scholars.[14] [14] Maier, Henrike (2015). "Games as Cultural Heritage Copyright Challenges for Preserving (Orphan) Video Games in the EU" http://www.hiig.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Maier_JIPITEC-2015-120_Games-as-cultural-heritage.pdf http://www.hiig.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Maier_JIPITEC-... (PDF). JIPITEC. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. p. 120. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
• farawayzone0019 3y ago
  > If something is not legally available then copyright law ought to make it eligible for free distribution What about stuff that's in flight? Or your IP that you've developed that is taken off the market and you are incorporating into another product? Or stuff you put out there and it flops because of timing and you plan to relaunch again in 2 years? There are many situations where this doesn't hold up. You sentiment makes sense but implementation is tricky.
  • Eisenstein 3y ago
    This is why legislation isn't one sentence long and we also have judges.
  • account42 3y ago
    What about it? Why should anyone have the right to make things unavailable but still control what others do.
• lancesells 3y ago
  This type of thinking always seems very entitled. Just because you can't obtain a copy of something in a convenient manner it should be distributed for free? It's ok for things to die. It's ok for things to be hard to get. The world doesn't need all media available at all times to everyone.
  • ncallaway 3y ago
    It's not okay for things to be impossible to get after it expires from copyright. That was the entire deal that was struck to allow copyright to exist. The entire bargain is that the creator gets an exclusive protection in exchange for the work entering the public domain. If the work doesn't enter the public domain, then it shouldn't have received a copyright protection.
  • vkou 3y ago
    > The world doesn't need all media available at all times to everyone. The world also doesn't need any more media created, the amount of good - no, great - media that I'd like to consume that already exists is vastly greater than the amount of time I have in my life to consume it. Given that state of affairs, why do we even need any laws that encourage the production of new media? I mean, I'm highly sympathetic to the situation of the starving artist, but I'm not at all sympathetic to the situation of his publisher. If copyright, and the creative industry, and all of its production of new works disappeared tomorrow, it would have no meaningful impact on my life. The world doesn't need any more media created.
    • TheArchive56 3y ago
      > The world doesn't need any more media created. Art is a reflection of society and culture. We absolutely NEED more art created. It drives humanity forward. > If copyright, and the creative industry, and all of its production of new works disappeared tomorrow, it would have no meaningful impact on my life. In relation to my previous point, no new art being created would have a massive negative affect on all of society. Everyone, including you, would be impacted. It also comes off as shortsighted and unsympathetic to the starving artist to say that their lively-hoods being impacted/eliminated would have no impact on your life. > I mean, I'm highly sympathetic to the situation of the starving artist, but I'm not at all sympathetic to the situation of his publisher. A publisher offers an artist many benefits, ranging from distribution reach, legal protections, and other benefits that a single artist would have a hard time managing on their own. Reforming the copyright system and the relationships between artists and publishers requires a very nuanced look at all of the issues to allow art, artists, and society as a whole to flourish.
• jedberg 3y ago
  This is one of those things that a bit of technology could so easily resolve. The government sets up a website where you can upload the work you want to copyright and register yourself as the owner. If it's something like software, you must upload the code. It wouldn't be visible to anyone, but would be there in case the copyright expires. If someone wants to use your work, they can contact you though the website. If you don't reply (edit: this should say acknowledge) in some reasonable amount of time (say three months), then the copyright is considered abandoned and the work enters the public domain. For existing works, give people say two years to upload and register. Anything not registered (or at least marked as "in dispute") becomes public domain. This at least solves the abandoned works problem, as well as the archiving problem. After 100ish years, we'd have a copy of every work as it enters the public domain.
  • LegitShady 3y ago
    >If you don't reply in some reasonable amount of time (say three months), then the copyright is considered abandoned and the work enters the public domain. I'm not sure why I'm legally required to respond to requests for the use of my copyrighted works. I can simply ignore them. Requiring that I respond to them will create an undue burden on me. I don't mind as long as I can bill you personally for forcing me to hire someone to respond to such requests, at a reasonable rate for a legal attorney with a specialty in copyright. He can even provide invoices, although the time required to produce the invoice will be included in the invoice.
    • jedberg 3y ago
      You don't have to respond. You just have to acknowledge that you've received the request and that you still wish to hold the copyright.
      • benabbottnz 3y ago
        Then everyone will just use an auto-reply service.
• ncallaway 3y ago
  I generally think that copyright should have to be extended every 5 years for an escalating fee. Part of the scheme is that to extend the copyright, you must list contact information for the current owners of the copyright. All these numbers below are purely examples of the kind of scaling I think should exist So, from creation 0-5 years everything is automatically instantly copyrighted (as it is today). 5-10 years you must manually extend the copyright and it costs $500/work. 10-15 years it should cost $5,000/work. 15-20 years $100,000/work. 20-25 years $500,000/work, etc. By the time we're at 50 years, an additional 5 years registration should cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and would only be done for the _most_ important properties (like The Mouse). (In my ideal world, these fees would go into an arts fund in the federal government that could be used to encourage the creation of less financially viable arts, like local theatre programs, arts education for children, etc) In such a scheme if a work is particularly valuable (either because it's being mass distributed, or because it has value in not being mass distributed), then the owner could maintain the copyright, but it would just be totally financially non-viable for these kinds of abandoned games to remain locked up. There'd be absolutely no business case for it.
  • dontlaugh 3y ago
    Or even simpler: 5 years and you can extend it twice. That’s it.
    • ncallaway 3y ago
      I would be totally fine with that, but I think it would be...not politically viable. This scheme is basically my compromise that I think could be able to survive in some form. I think your proposal is a better version of copyright, but I think as a starting point for a legislative discussion it probably doesn't get a conversation off the ground
    • tptacek 3y ago
      That would be a shorter term of copyright than has ever existed in the United States.
      • 3y ago
• bogantech 3y ago
  If someone creates something and decides not to sell it that is their right. You don't have a divine right to other peoples belongings.
  • f001 3y ago
    Absolutely. But that person also does not have a divine right to prevent someone else from copying and selling/distributing it either. Especially when doing so does not deprive the original creator of anything unlike physically stealing something.
    • stcroixx 3y ago
      In what universe does someone selling a book I wrote not deprive me of those same sales? How about I sell my book if I choose to and you decide whether to sell yours.
      • lmm 3y ago
        It doesn't "deprive" you of anything. You're not entitled to a business model.
• philwelch 3y ago
  I’ve long favored a copyright abandonment law where refusing or failing to make a work available voids the copyright. I also think this should apply to derived works. For instance, if a film or a book is changed and only sold in the edited form, this should void the copyright on the original version.
• bogwog 3y ago
  Copyright is a monopoly, and it should be scrutinized as such. It does provide some much-needed to protections for rights holders, but it provides very little protection for consumers. Fair use is something at least, but doesn’t help when rights holders engage in predatory practices that only serve to harm consumers (e.g. the hell that is video streaming today) Idk what a better copyright law would look like, but I do know that we can do better, and believe it can be done in a way that benefits everyone fairly.
• vel0city 3y ago
  If I write in my journal it is copyrighted. I may not wish for you to have a copy of my journal. The law should then require me to let you take a copy of it despite me not wanting you to have it?
  • lmm 3y ago
    Copyright is about whether I can make and distribute copies of something I've legitimately acquired; for private material like a journal it's irrelevant whether it's copyrighted.
    • vel0city 3y ago
      Copyright applies whether or not the origin was "legitimately" acquired or not. Its what makes that journal continue to be private. If you accidentally stumble upon my data like a journal or some fiction I wrote, what then stops you from republishing it however you want if not copyright?
      • lmm 3y ago
        > If you accidentally stumble upon my data like a journal or some fiction I wrote, what then stops you from republishing it however you want if not copyright? Trade secrets, privacy laws, what have you. Copyright was never intended to cover that case; if it does it's purely accidental, and if we want to address it well then dedicated laws are a better approach.
        • vel0city 3y ago
          My journal or some piece of fiction wouldn't be covered under any US trade secret statue that I know of. I don't know of any privacy laws outside of any PII in the journal, but a piece of fiction I wrote wouldn't be covered under any privacy laws for sure. The only thing giving me the right to stop somoene from distributing it without my approval is copyright.
• tptacek 3y ago
  People can choose not to make the product of their work available. We don't have an inalienable right to access other people's creative works.
  • bakugo 3y ago
    > People can choose not to make the product of their work available. And these people have chosen to make it available. If you want to create something and keep it all to yourself, fine, do that, nobody will force you to release it to the public. But once you have released it to the public, you shouldn't be able to take it back.
    • tptacek 3y ago
      People are allowed to be selective about how they make things available, and they're allowed to stop putting the effort in to keep them available without forfeiting their rights. Again: we aren't entitled to access this stuff, except by contract, which spells out our remedies when they exist.
      • bakugo 3y ago
        You're just regurgitating what the current laws state. The whole point of this discussion is that said current laws lead to most media effectively becoming lost after a certain period of time and this is a problem, so the law should be changed.
        • tptacek 3y ago
          No, I'm saying that the principle underlying those laws is sound and should be respected. We're not entitled to other people's work product!
          • pseudalopex 3y ago
            We are not entitled to reproduction monopolies.
• thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Copyright, as originally envisioned, should be a temporary privilege instead of a de facto ghost racket for perpetual extortion. Copyright as originally envisioned was a way of preventing books from being published if the crown didn't approve of them.
• rvba 3y ago
  welcome to IPpreservationshop.com where you can buy a copy of our game for 20 million dollars Of course no-one will do, but we can claim that the game is available legally
  • lmm 3y ago
    My imaginary approach is that you'd have to submit an actual copy to the Library of Congress or equivalent every year / every 5 years / .... So it forces you to at least track what you're copyrighting and have a working "production line". You could still refuse to sell it to anyone, but that would be essentially pique.
• rewgs 3y ago
  I think that makes complete sense. After all, something similar already happens with trademarks: if you don't use it, it lapses. Presumably companies only invest time and money on using the trademarks they expect to yield a return on that investment; if they aren't making money off of it, why should they get to keep others from doing so?
• soligern 3y ago
  There would just be loopholes that can’t realistically be closed. Like they sell only physical copies out of one location in a rural place that is basically inaccessible. I’m also not for forcing people/companies to maintain an online marketplace of their goods.
• chrismcb 3y ago
  Well it is a "temporary" privilege. It is just that "temporary"timeline is longer than the life of an average human. I disagree with the assertion that if it isn't legally available... But I do agree that copyright is too long
• philowe2001 3y ago
  Old content can compete with new content, causing publishers to lose money. I'm not saying copyright law is good in the form that it exists today, but just because old content does not make money means that old content being available can't lose them money.