6 ms·

Copyright and fair use in the digital era

30 points by webmaven 3y ago

ronsor 3y ago
The only real solution to our copyright problem is to roll it back significantly. Get rid of DMCA section 1201 and reduce copyright terms back to the original 14 years plus a single renewal.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  But how would you make that happen?
- shagie 3y ago
  This suggestion is a fantasy and would imply leaving the Berne Convention and TRIPS ( Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ) which is part of the WTO. Doing this only in the US would put our intellectual property in similar company as North Korea, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan.
  - kbutler 3y ago
    The development and enforcement of Berne and TRIPS have largely been pushed by US interests. We can push to change them.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    You're right about it being a fantasy but not because the WTO has the power to overrule the US. It's because the political class of the US put those clauses in TRIPS for the benefit of the US people in aggregate - i.e. the "we're better off with draconian copyright law if it keeps China on a leash" argument that is implied when people complaining about "China stealing our IP". If the US actually backed out of TRIPS you would see a large number of countries either following or being amenable to following them out. Most countries are net-payers into the current copyright system, which is designed to leash everyone else to rich countries, and would love not having to pay into it anymore. The biggest hold-outs would be the EU and Japan. It's important to note that the last copyright term extension was just as much Germany's fault as it was Disney's and the EU could easily propagandize[0] against a low-copyright or copyright-free US. And Japan is run by a right-wing corporatocracy called the LDP that constantly wins because nobody in Japan actually votes[1]. [0] The reason why it's easy is long and complicated, but basically, resentment of America goes back centuries and is a weird meme of the monarchy that cross-pollinated into every other political ideology of Europe. [1] Which, to be fair, also applies to America. The difference is that the LDP's opposition is the Japanese Communist Party - which means the LDP was an American puppet while the JCP was a Soviet one.
    - ronsor 3y ago
      > we're better off with draconian copyright law if it keeps China on a leash The irony of this argument is that China is seemingly undeterred by any of these treaties. As long as China is the manufacturing hub, they can do what they want anyway.
  - realusername 3y ago
    We're so far down the absurdly long copyright duration nonsense that any proposition of a reasonable duration is labelled as "fantasy" and compared to north Korea, that's a bit scary.
- jfengel 3y ago
  I don't see how that helps here. That opens up a whole bunch of older content, but all of the new digital-era stuff remains locked up for decades.
  - ronsor 3y ago
    14 years is hardly decades. I suggested that because that was the original period of time, but I'd rather something like 8 or 10 years.
    - jfengel 3y ago
      You said "a single renewal", which I assumed to be another 14 years. 28 years is "decades".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hliyan 3y ago
  Implications for generative AI aside, 14 years + single renewal for all copyrighted work seems very reasonable. The world moves at such a fast pace today that 14 years is a long time in which to monetize intellectual property. And in the worst case, it will mean that AIs are "only" 14 years behind the times, OR, their creators only have to pay royalties for 14 years worth of human knowledge.
- anticensor 3y ago
  If they reduced the copyright term to 14 years today, they would do it as a "14 years of copyright, then the state gets an enforced perpetual paying public domain subject to royalty in use cases that apply to usual copyright royalties", not like "14 years of copyright, then free for all".
kmeisthax 3y ago
> In a brief submitted on behalf of the publishers, the Authors Guild argued that Kahle and supporters of the Internet Archive need to "recognize that rights available to owners of physical books simply did not make sense in the digital era," the Times summarized. Digital content is inherently different from print "because it is infinitely copyable and unprotectable," said copyright lawyer Mary Rasenberger, the chief executive of the guild. If "anyone could call themselves a library" and operate like the archive did when they shared copies of physical books, "writers would have absolutely no control over their work anymore," she added. This has always struck me as a weird argument. Digital does not make copying infinite any more than the Gutenberg printing press made copying infinite. What both inventions did was make copying more democratic, and the instruments of the state and the creative industry had to spend time and money bringing it back under control. "Unprotectable" is a particularly strange argument because part of the CDL scheme literally involved wrapping all the lended-out ebooks with DRM, specifically so that they couldn't be copied further. What IA (and ReDigi before it) wanted was a world in which copies made to effect the same rights that are associated with physical sale - and no further - were legal. The world in which the publishers and the law lives in is one where burning a book and then printing out a replacement copy is infringing. Which is stupid and petty. Publishers want to point out that the fragility of physical media was the price paid for first sale, but digital copies are similarly fragile. In fact, they're even more fragile because they die when the DRM server they're locked to gets shut down. And nobody was actually delicately balancing fragility against author's rights when first sale was put into caselaw. They were balancing author's rights against owner's rights. Writers having absolutely no control over their work is laughable. First, because you are publishers. Your business model literally involves taking control away from writers and putting it in the hands of professional marketers and salespeople. Second, because the IA CDL theory doesn't actually take any more control away than what first sale did. You're angry that the 50-year-old campaign you mounted to completely strip everyone of ownership might have been slightly slowed by your own DRM tools. Anyway, rant over, I'm just glad they decided not to completely burn down the Internet Archive. I can only imagine the RIAA is going to have even more mind-irritating arguments.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
saaaaaam 3y ago
It’s a slightly strange article because it assumes that an equivalent of “reading” which it posits is permitted under copyright is somehow free. It’s not. If you want to consume copyright protected content you need - unless the copyright owner allows you - to make some sort of value exchange. Often the primary application of this is that an author (or creator) licenses their content to a publisher (or distributor) and that publisher pays them a royalty for the use of the content. However, the licence that the author provides will (should) specify what uses are covered by the licence. So if an author grants a licence to a publisher then the licence may allow the publisher to print and sell books - but might exclude the right for the underlying literary work to be adapted as a screenplay. So if someone wants to make a film or TV show of that work they need to revert to the author. The publisher may or may not be cut in on that deal. This is a primary tenet of copyright: that the copyright owner can control who does what, and only they can grant that permission, and they can sell (or exchange value) for that permission. It’s a logical leap to say “because the copyright owner has licensed this work to a publisher for people to read it is then ok to use that content to inform composite derivative works using AI”. To expand on the proposal of the article that a search engine “reading” an article is the same as AI “reading” an article: when a search engine “reads” copyright protected content it is creating a signpost - similar to Dewey Decimal signposting - not (generally, but see google news lawsuits) aggregating the works to create derivative works. Addressing the google news point there is an argument that a value exchange has taken place - that the publisher is allowing (or excluding) the use based on the utility they get in terms of increased visibility/audience/ad revenue. If an AI ingests copyright work that is fine so long as the author knowingly permits it and is compensated. However I bet if you said to screenwriters or musicians or journalists “will you licence your work and unique stylistic voice to a company that will create new works that are creatively and stylistically largely indistinguishable from yours” they would say no. Plagiarism is plagiarism and if a human reads and regurgitates a work protected by copyright the copyright owner may (as has been seen in various song lawsuits - and other creative works related lawsuits) have a case to say their copyright has been abused, and be compensated.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  We're all struggling to adapt rules meant for humans and books, to robots and limitless search engines. Humans read one story at a time and imperfectly remember it; robots can read millions and remember them all. Books contain static prose; online texts can change and adapt and be rewritten. What is a 'reader'? What is a 'book'? What is 'one copy'? Who owns exactly what? It'll take some time to settle on something. In the mean time expect lots of these articles arguing around words they don't define exactly, making similes that don't hold much water.

30 points by webmaven 3y ago

The only real solution to our copyright problem is to roll it back significantly. Get rid of DMCA section 1201 and reduce copyright terms back to the original 14 years plus a single renewal.

mdp2021 3y ago
But how would you make that happen?
shagie 3y ago
This suggestion is a fantasy and would imply leaving the Berne Convention and TRIPS ( Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ) which is part of the WTO. Doing this only in the US would put our intellectual property in similar company as North Korea, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan.
- kbutler 3y ago
  The development and enforcement of Berne and TRIPS have largely been pushed by US interests. We can push to change them.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  You're right about it being a fantasy but not because the WTO has the power to overrule the US. It's because the political class of the US put those clauses in TRIPS for the benefit of the US people in aggregate - i.e. the "we're better off with draconian copyright law if it keeps China on a leash" argument that is implied when people complaining about "China stealing our IP". If the US actually backed out of TRIPS you would see a large number of countries either following or being amenable to following them out. Most countries are net-payers into the current copyright system, which is designed to leash everyone else to rich countries, and would love not having to pay into it anymore. The biggest hold-outs would be the EU and Japan. It's important to note that the last copyright term extension was just as much Germany's fault as it was Disney's and the EU could easily propagandize[0] against a low-copyright or copyright-free US. And Japan is run by a right-wing corporatocracy called the LDP that constantly wins because nobody in Japan actually votes[1]. [0] The reason why it's easy is long and complicated, but basically, resentment of America goes back centuries and is a weird meme of the monarchy that cross-pollinated into every other political ideology of Europe. [1] Which, to be fair, also applies to America. The difference is that the LDP's opposition is the Japanese Communist Party - which means the LDP was an American puppet while the JCP was a Soviet one.
  - ronsor 3y ago
    > we're better off with draconian copyright law if it keeps China on a leash The irony of this argument is that China is seemingly undeterred by any of these treaties. As long as China is the manufacturing hub, they can do what they want anyway.
- realusername 3y ago
  We're so far down the absurdly long copyright duration nonsense that any proposition of a reasonable duration is labelled as "fantasy" and compared to north Korea, that's a bit scary.
jfengel 3y ago
I don't see how that helps here. That opens up a whole bunch of older content, but all of the new digital-era stuff remains locked up for decades.
- ronsor 3y ago
  14 years is hardly decades. I suggested that because that was the original period of time, but I'd rather something like 8 or 10 years.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    You said "a single renewal", which I assumed to be another 14 years. 28 years is "decades".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hliyan 3y ago
Implications for generative AI aside, 14 years + single renewal for all copyrighted work seems very reasonable. The world moves at such a fast pace today that 14 years is a long time in which to monetize intellectual property. And in the worst case, it will mean that AIs are "only" 14 years behind the times, OR, their creators only have to pay royalties for 14 years worth of human knowledge.
anticensor 3y ago
If they reduced the copyright term to 14 years today, they would do it as a "14 years of copyright, then the state gets an enforced perpetual paying public domain subject to royalty in use cases that apply to usual copyright royalties", not like "14 years of copyright, then free for all".

kmeisthax 3y ago

> In a brief submitted on behalf of the publishers, the Authors Guild argued that Kahle and supporters of the Internet Archive need to "recognize that rights available to owners of physical books simply did not make sense in the digital era," the Times summarized. Digital content is inherently different from print "because it is infinitely copyable and unprotectable," said copyright lawyer Mary Rasenberger, the chief executive of the guild. If "anyone could call themselves a library" and operate like the archive did when they shared copies of physical books, "writers would have absolutely no control over their work anymore," she added. This has always struck me as a weird argument. Digital does not make copying infinite any more than the Gutenberg printing press made copying infinite. What both inventions did was make copying more democratic, and the instruments of the state and the creative industry had to spend time and money bringing it back under control. "Unprotectable" is a particularly strange argument because part of the CDL scheme literally involved wrapping all the lended-out ebooks with DRM, specifically so that they couldn't be copied further. What IA (and ReDigi before it) wanted was a world in which copies made to effect the same rights that are associated with physical sale - and no further - were legal. The world in which the publishers and the law lives in is one where burning a book and then printing out a replacement copy is infringing. Which is stupid and petty. Publishers want to point out that the fragility of physical media was the price paid for first sale, but digital copies are similarly fragile. In fact, they're even more fragile because they die when the DRM server they're locked to gets shut down. And nobody was actually delicately balancing fragility against author's rights when first sale was put into caselaw. They were balancing author's rights against owner's rights. Writers having absolutely no control over their work is laughable. First, because you are publishers. Your business model literally involves taking control away from writers and putting it in the hands of professional marketers and salespeople. Second, because the IA CDL theory doesn't actually take any more control away than what first sale did. You're angry that the 50-year-old campaign you mounted to completely strip everyone of ownership might have been slightly slowed by your own DRM tools. Anyway, rant over, I'm just glad they decided not to completely burn down the Internet Archive. I can only imagine the RIAA is going to have even more mind-irritating arguments.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

saaaaaam 3y ago

It’s a slightly strange article because it assumes that an equivalent of “reading” which it posits is permitted under copyright is somehow free. It’s not. If you want to consume copyright protected content you need - unless the copyright owner allows you - to make some sort of value exchange. Often the primary application of this is that an author (or creator) licenses their content to a publisher (or distributor) and that publisher pays them a royalty for the use of the content. However, the licence that the author provides will (should) specify what uses are covered by the licence. So if an author grants a licence to a publisher then the licence may allow the publisher to print and sell books - but might exclude the right for the underlying literary work to be adapted as a screenplay. So if someone wants to make a film or TV show of that work they need to revert to the author. The publisher may or may not be cut in on that deal. This is a primary tenet of copyright: that the copyright owner can control who does what, and only they can grant that permission, and they can sell (or exchange value) for that permission. It’s a logical leap to say “because the copyright owner has licensed this work to a publisher for people to read it is then ok to use that content to inform composite derivative works using AI”. To expand on the proposal of the article that a search engine “reading” an article is the same as AI “reading” an article: when a search engine “reads” copyright protected content it is creating a signpost - similar to Dewey Decimal signposting - not (generally, but see google news lawsuits) aggregating the works to create derivative works. Addressing the google news point there is an argument that a value exchange has taken place - that the publisher is allowing (or excluding) the use based on the utility they get in terms of increased visibility/audience/ad revenue. If an AI ingests copyright work that is fine so long as the author knowingly permits it and is compensated. However I bet if you said to screenwriters or musicians or journalists “will you licence your work and unique stylistic voice to a company that will create new works that are creatively and stylistically largely indistinguishable from yours” they would say no. Plagiarism is plagiarism and if a human reads and regurgitates a work protected by copyright the copyright owner may (as has been seen in various song lawsuits - and other creative works related lawsuits) have a case to say their copyright has been abused, and be compensated.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago
We're all struggling to adapt rules meant for humans and books, to robots and limitless search engines. Humans read one story at a time and imperfectly remember it; robots can read millions and remember them all. Books contain static prose; online texts can change and adapt and be rewritten. What is a 'reader'? What is a 'book'? What is 'one copy'? Who owns exactly what? It'll take some time to settle on something. In the mean time expect lots of these articles arguing around words they don't define exactly, making similes that don't hold much water.