6 ms·

Three Strikes Against ACTA In European Parliament Today

54 points by Tsiolkovsky 14y ago

josteink 14y ago
It's interesting that in the US, the country which has attempted to push this legislation on everyone else, that Obama declined to reject it because "it was an internationally binding agreement" before almost anyone else has voted on it or ratified it. Hopefully this is the beginning of an end in the US-led international abuse of copyright law. Copyright law needs to reform and it needs to get back to its roots. It needs to get back to being limited and it needs to get back to being a temporary monopoly. The public domain, the one thing which copyright law was actually created to ensure, is dying before our very eyes and noone seems willing to save it.
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  What kind of copyright reform would you like to see? Is it to do with the years a person has copyright on something? I think the best way to do it would be allowing someone to maintain copyright on their creation until they die (or in the case of multiple creators, they are all dead) after which it immediately enters public domain. There would also need to be provisions that record/movie companies etc. couldn't hold copyright, it would have to remain with the creator. Of course then there is the problem of defining the creator.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    There's a couple problems I see with that, although it's always an interesting discussion to me. First off, what if I create a song all by myself then on the way back from the studio I die in a car accident? The song goes on to make millions, played on every radio station. My estate sees none of that money. There has to be some kind of time allotment (life + 10 years or 25 years, whichever comes first, that kind of idea). Secondly, corporations must be able to hold copyright over works created by their employees. Lets bring this into the software world: I create a program while working at my company. Right now, the company holds that copyright. Doesn't matter who created it; if it was made at work, the company owns it. Artists are the employees of their record label. It would be awful if I could use company time and resources to make software then turn around and sell it to their competitors. It would make sense to me to draw a line between "creative works" and "business need", where a creative/entertainment copyright would give the studio a license to the song but copyright would remain with the creator, while non-entertainment business needs would have the copyright transferred to the company immediately and permanently.
    - rmc 14y ago
      what if I create a song all by myself then on the way back from the studio I die in a car accident? If copyright term was 10 years (e.g. no metion of 'death'), then the copyright would be an asset inherited by your heirs, which would be valid for another 10 years. Simplies "life + X years" can screw the public if you make something in your 20s and live to be 90.
      - k-mcgrady 14y ago
        >>"life + X years" can screw the public if you make something in your 20s and live to be 90." I don't see how that would screw the public. As long as you make it available at a fair price in a popular format. Could you explain that a bit more? (I'm really interested)
        aurelianito 14y ago
        As I understand it. We, the public, grant the artist a small monopoly on his work and (s)he, in return, makes more art. If the granted monopoly is bigger, the artist is not fulfilling its part. (s)he is abusing the good will of the public. And that's why I think copyright extensions should not be possible. I, as a member of the public, am taken away a right that was "pre-acquired" by me. The right to use this work of art after certain time.
        rmc 14y ago
        It can screw the public if the creator cannot be found. An example: a relative is making a website about their home village. They found a photo in the library of the village taken in 1921. We have no idea who took it. If it was someone aged 20, who lived to be 80 (entirely possible) it would still be copyrighted. Or someone aged 60 might have taken it 5 years before their death. There are lots of copyrighted works that are "locked away" and of unknown copyright status.
  - josteink 14y ago
    Copyright should only be long enough to encourage creation of content. Back in the days, when things moved a million times slower than they do today, 14 years was more than sufficient to encourage mass creation of content. No author's life plus plus bullshit. 14 years. That's what you got to monetize. No more. I see no reason it should be anything more today.
    - glesica 14y ago
      I personally like this idea, or some variant thereof. Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist). Additionally, if a creator dies suddenly, his estate can still exercise his copyright. This is important for small-time creators who may be supporting families and the like. The big counter-argument that I've heard is that movie studios (Disney especially with the "vault") still make money on movies that are decades old. But this is a fundamentally flawed argument. The point of copyright (both theoretically and in the US Constitution) is to encourage creation. So it doesn't matter if copyright doesn't maximize Disney's revenue, so long as it is enough to encourage them to make movies in the first place. A term of roughly 10-20 years should be more than enough to do that.
      - toyg 14y ago
        If anything, the Disney example is in favour of short terms: as it is, Disney could now just sit on their bottom and keep selling what they've produced in the 60s rather than creating new content.
      - rmc 14y ago
        Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist) They've thought of that. Usually the law says "50 years from creation if the copyright is held by a company" or something like that.
        luriel 14y ago
  - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
    I would like the length of copyright limited, but I would also like the extent of copyright limited. I think fair use should be expanded significantly, particularly for non-commercial uses. I also think anticircumvention laws should be scrapped: violations should be based on the illegal use of digital lock breaking tools/techniques, rather than trying to make it illegal to possess or discuss them.
  - njs12345 14y ago
    There's some interesting discussion about how long copyright terms should be to be economically optimal here: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyrig... It arrives at a figure of 15 years, which seems quite sensible to me..
  - rmc 14y ago
    What kind of copyright reform would you like to see? Is it to do with the years a person has copyright on something? My ideas: • Copyright lasts 10 years from creation, maybe extensible to 20 or 30 if you pay a fee based on the amount of years you want extra. As with the existing system, copyright is instaneous and doesn't require a registration fee. • Similar to trademark law, "everyone else is let away with it" should be a defence to copyright infringement. (e.g. You are being sued for using a P2P network, but you can find lots of people who weren't sued, ergo you get off the hook. This happens with trademarks) • Bring the law into line with what the general public thinks are moral, e.g. format shifting, time shifting, should be legal. • Gradual "Creative Commons-ification" of all copyright. After 10 years, all copyrighted material is also available as a CC-BY-ND-NC (creative commons, non commercial, attribution, no derivates) licence. After 15, CC-BY-NC etc. • A work is only copyrightable in a country if the original copyright holder is commercially exploiting it (or was commercially exploiting it in the last ~5 years). Films made in the USA but not available in, say, UK, are copyrighted. If a book goes out of print, and you can't buy it, you can't photocopy it. • Loss of copyright if there are too many false applications of DMCA-type take down notices for that work. I have no problem with corporations holding copyright, artists should be allowed sell it.
    - bad_user 14y ago
      Format shifting is legal, falling under fair use. The problem is with DRM which can't be legally circumvented, even if you are the author of the freaking thing (trying to recover your own work from a Blu-Ray or something).
      - rmc 14y ago
        Format shifting is not legal in some countries, notable the UK.
    - zrail 14y ago
      The forced gradual opening of rights is interesting. After 10 years, you can still make money off licensing fees but everyone can use it for non-commercial purposes, then later on that drops off. I like it.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    How about "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"? An excellent, excellent read on this is Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture". Available under CC as PDF or EPUB. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ It explores the politics and history of copyright, copyright extension, freedom of use, and the importance of having freely available works. My preference would be for a return to something much closer to the original terms of copyright. Limitations on publication, on registration only, for a limited time (14-28 years should be more than enough). Very limited restrictions on derivative use, disassembly, interpretation, or public performance (including mechanical nominal usage rates). No copyright protections for DRM. Much stronger Fair Use provisions and streamlined procedures for securing same for reasonable use cases. The original Constitutional provision of copyright was aimed rather precisely at avoiding just what we have today: a powerful publishing monopoly with a strong interest in preserving perpetual copyright. I'd like to see copyright ownership be unassignable (as you suggest). Derived rights could be licensed for a time, but would always revert to the original author. This would get past the abuses particularly in music and corporate works. European tradition allows for this in a weak form -- attribution rights cannot be assigned, but all others can ("droigt d'auteur").
jeremyswank 14y ago
how about this: copyright is a moral right pertaining to the creator (or group of creators). it cannot be transferred. it cannot be sold to a corporation. it cannot be inherited. it lasts 14 years without fee, and you can renew it up to 2 times for a fee (as was the tradition before, if i am not mistaken). my assumption is (roughly) that if copyright is intended to encourage and support creative output, then only the actual creators should be the beneficiaries of it. (i don't know if i really think this would be the best -- or even a good -- system, in a way i'm trying it on for size and want to hear what others think.)
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  You mean similarly to patents? I always think it's strange how patents expire but copyright never seems to.

54 points by Tsiolkovsky 14y ago

It's interesting that in the US, the country which has attempted to push this legislation on everyone else, that Obama declined to reject it because "it was an internationally binding agreement" before almost anyone else has voted on it or ratified it. Hopefully this is the beginning of an end in the US-led international abuse of copyright law. Copyright law needs to reform and it needs to get back to its roots. It needs to get back to being limited and it needs to get back to being a temporary monopoly. The public domain, the one thing which copyright law was actually created to ensure, is dying before our very eyes and noone seems willing to save it.

k-mcgrady 14y ago
What kind of copyright reform would you like to see? Is it to do with the years a person has copyright on something? I think the best way to do it would be allowing someone to maintain copyright on their creation until they die (or in the case of multiple creators, they are all dead) after which it immediately enters public domain. There would also need to be provisions that record/movie companies etc. couldn't hold copyright, it would have to remain with the creator. Of course then there is the problem of defining the creator.
- freehunter 14y ago
  There's a couple problems I see with that, although it's always an interesting discussion to me. First off, what if I create a song all by myself then on the way back from the studio I die in a car accident? The song goes on to make millions, played on every radio station. My estate sees none of that money. There has to be some kind of time allotment (life + 10 years or 25 years, whichever comes first, that kind of idea). Secondly, corporations must be able to hold copyright over works created by their employees. Lets bring this into the software world: I create a program while working at my company. Right now, the company holds that copyright. Doesn't matter who created it; if it was made at work, the company owns it. Artists are the employees of their record label. It would be awful if I could use company time and resources to make software then turn around and sell it to their competitors. It would make sense to me to draw a line between "creative works" and "business need", where a creative/entertainment copyright would give the studio a license to the song but copyright would remain with the creator, while non-entertainment business needs would have the copyright transferred to the company immediately and permanently.
  - rmc 14y ago
    what if I create a song all by myself then on the way back from the studio I die in a car accident? If copyright term was 10 years (e.g. no metion of 'death'), then the copyright would be an asset inherited by your heirs, which would be valid for another 10 years. Simplies "life + X years" can screw the public if you make something in your 20s and live to be 90.
    - k-mcgrady 14y ago
      >>"life + X years" can screw the public if you make something in your 20s and live to be 90." I don't see how that would screw the public. As long as you make it available at a fair price in a popular format. Could you explain that a bit more? (I'm really interested)
      - aurelianito 14y ago
        As I understand it. We, the public, grant the artist a small monopoly on his work and (s)he, in return, makes more art. If the granted monopoly is bigger, the artist is not fulfilling its part. (s)he is abusing the good will of the public. And that's why I think copyright extensions should not be possible. I, as a member of the public, am taken away a right that was "pre-acquired" by me. The right to use this work of art after certain time.
      - rmc 14y ago
        It can screw the public if the creator cannot be found. An example: a relative is making a website about their home village. They found a photo in the library of the village taken in 1921. We have no idea who took it. If it was someone aged 20, who lived to be 80 (entirely possible) it would still be copyrighted. Or someone aged 60 might have taken it 5 years before their death. There are lots of copyrighted works that are "locked away" and of unknown copyright status.
- josteink 14y ago
  Copyright should only be long enough to encourage creation of content. Back in the days, when things moved a million times slower than they do today, 14 years was more than sufficient to encourage mass creation of content. No author's life plus plus bullshit. 14 years. That's what you got to monetize. No more. I see no reason it should be anything more today.
  - glesica 14y ago
    I personally like this idea, or some variant thereof. Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist). Additionally, if a creator dies suddenly, his estate can still exercise his copyright. This is important for small-time creators who may be supporting families and the like. The big counter-argument that I've heard is that movie studios (Disney especially with the "vault") still make money on movies that are decades old. But this is a fundamentally flawed argument. The point of copyright (both theoretically and in the US Constitution) is to encourage creation. So it doesn't matter if copyright doesn't maximize Disney's revenue, so long as it is enough to encourage them to make movies in the first place. A term of roughly 10-20 years should be more than enough to do that.
    - toyg 14y ago
      If anything, the Disney example is in favour of short terms: as it is, Disney could now just sit on their bottom and keep selling what they've produced in the 60s rather than creating new content.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist) They've thought of that. Usually the law says "50 years from creation if the copyright is held by a company" or something like that.
      - luriel 14y ago
- RyanMcGreal 14y ago
  I would like the length of copyright limited, but I would also like the extent of copyright limited. I think fair use should be expanded significantly, particularly for non-commercial uses. I also think anticircumvention laws should be scrapped: violations should be based on the illegal use of digital lock breaking tools/techniques, rather than trying to make it illegal to possess or discuss them.
- njs12345 14y ago
  There's some interesting discussion about how long copyright terms should be to be economically optimal here: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyrig... It arrives at a figure of 15 years, which seems quite sensible to me..
- rmc 14y ago
  What kind of copyright reform would you like to see? Is it to do with the years a person has copyright on something? My ideas: • Copyright lasts 10 years from creation, maybe extensible to 20 or 30 if you pay a fee based on the amount of years you want extra. As with the existing system, copyright is instaneous and doesn't require a registration fee. • Similar to trademark law, "everyone else is let away with it" should be a defence to copyright infringement. (e.g. You are being sued for using a P2P network, but you can find lots of people who weren't sued, ergo you get off the hook. This happens with trademarks) • Bring the law into line with what the general public thinks are moral, e.g. format shifting, time shifting, should be legal. • Gradual "Creative Commons-ification" of all copyright. After 10 years, all copyrighted material is also available as a CC-BY-ND-NC (creative commons, non commercial, attribution, no derivates) licence. After 15, CC-BY-NC etc. • A work is only copyrightable in a country if the original copyright holder is commercially exploiting it (or was commercially exploiting it in the last ~5 years). Films made in the USA but not available in, say, UK, are copyrighted. If a book goes out of print, and you can't buy it, you can't photocopy it. • Loss of copyright if there are too many false applications of DMCA-type take down notices for that work. I have no problem with corporations holding copyright, artists should be allowed sell it.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    Format shifting is legal, falling under fair use. The problem is with DRM which can't be legally circumvented, even if you are the author of the freaking thing (trying to recover your own work from a Blu-Ray or something).
    - rmc 14y ago
      Format shifting is not legal in some countries, notable the UK.
  - zrail 14y ago
    The forced gradual opening of rights is interesting. After 10 years, you can still make money off licensing fees but everyone can use it for non-commercial purposes, then later on that drops off. I like it.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  How about "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"? An excellent, excellent read on this is Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture". Available under CC as PDF or EPUB. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ It explores the politics and history of copyright, copyright extension, freedom of use, and the importance of having freely available works. My preference would be for a return to something much closer to the original terms of copyright. Limitations on publication, on registration only, for a limited time (14-28 years should be more than enough). Very limited restrictions on derivative use, disassembly, interpretation, or public performance (including mechanical nominal usage rates). No copyright protections for DRM. Much stronger Fair Use provisions and streamlined procedures for securing same for reasonable use cases. The original Constitutional provision of copyright was aimed rather precisely at avoiding just what we have today: a powerful publishing monopoly with a strong interest in preserving perpetual copyright. I'd like to see copyright ownership be unassignable (as you suggest). Derived rights could be licensed for a time, but would always revert to the original author. This would get past the abuses particularly in music and corporate works. European tradition allows for this in a weak form -- attribution rights cannot be assigned, but all others can ("droigt d'auteur").

jeremyswank 14y ago

how about this: copyright is a moral right pertaining to the creator (or group of creators). it cannot be transferred. it cannot be sold to a corporation. it cannot be inherited. it lasts 14 years without fee, and you can renew it up to 2 times for a fee (as was the tradition before, if i am not mistaken). my assumption is (roughly) that if copyright is intended to encourage and support creative output, then only the actual creators should be the beneficiaries of it. (i don't know if i really think this would be the best -- or even a good -- system, in a way i'm trying it on for size and want to hear what others think.)

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
You mean similarly to patents? I always think it's strange how patents expire but copyright never seems to.