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Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to play the discs. Have the authors of t

by dfxm12 2y ago

Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to play the discs. Have the authors of these songs, the players on the recordings and the publishers of these discs not had enough of a chance to make their money? I'll take whatever judgement I can get in favor of the Internet Archive, but I think we should be aiming for a principled stance of enough copyright is enough!

Retric 2y ago
IMO copyright simply isn’t fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1 copies after 20 years isn’t economically meaningful to the creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it’s co opting the original creator as if they where endorsing what you’re doing. Which simply isn’t appropriate while the creator is alive. On the other hand if you’re selling action figures you expect little kids to create their own stories with those characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes, fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren’t obvious.
- redundantly 2y ago
  Your distinction between commercial use and things like meme culture doesn’t hold up. For example, memes can harm creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-right groups. If you want to protect creators, there’s no simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Focused on “commercial” and while ignoring “political campaign, etc” misses the point. There is a difference between making up a new Chuck Norris fact and using the meme to support religion, brands, politics, or whatever. Legal systems constantly deal with intangible abstracts like intent. “Pepe the Frog being co-opted” is cashing in on the existing work rather than operating in some hypothetical framework.
    - redundantly 2y ago
      Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA. Beyond that, creative works shape society, and arbitrarily restricting them stifles creativity. Granting exceptions for reasons like ‘think of the children’ or ‘it’s just for the lulz’ fails to address the greater issue.
      - Retric 2y ago
        > Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA. Being ‘Official’ is irrelevant. Noting happens without individuals doing something, who would then be liable in the system I am describing. > Granting exceptions for Exceptions completely defeat the point here. It’s the implied support that’s the problem not what’s being supported. Someone could be a well known champion of the issuing being supported, but disagree with being associated with the people presenting the message. We limit what you can do with someone’s likeness and someone’s works deserve protection for similar reasons. Under the current system this issue is irrelevant because of how long copyright lasts, but if you want dramatically shorter copyright people are going to want this kind of protection even for works they aren’t receiving royalties from.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  I agree that we're probably giving up something culturally and socially important by restricting the telling and remixing of stories, myths, characters, etc. As for co-opting work to spread a message the author wouldn't necessarily endorse, that interpretation sounds like one borne of a world with strict copyright that has trained people to expect all instances of a character or uses of a work to involve the author's permission. In a world without such an expectation that sort of usage would not be misinterpreted as endorsement.
  - Retric 2y ago
    > In a world without such an expectation that sort of usage would not be misinterpreted as endorsement. Memory is associative not some perfectly indexed logical deduction. Play a clip of something next to something else and people link them even if it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not such a big issue of someone is using characters from a novel in a new context, but we’re also dealing with recordings and deepfakes. Make a minor edit to a song and play it in a commercial and many people would get confused as to what the original lyrics where.
  - LocalH 2y ago
    > that interpretation sounds like one borne of a world with strict copyright that has trained people to expect all instances of a character or uses of a work to involve the author's permission I think rather it's borne of a world that views ideas as something to own, rather than something that you give to the world to enrich culture, arts, or sciences. There are people who desire perpetual copyright, and the eradication of the public domain. They see ideas as something they have a right to monetize until the end of time.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Ideas and recordings of performances are separate things. Someone may want to abolish copyright on books and still desire control over a sex tape they made 50 years ago.
squarefoot 2y ago
> The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. So they could have gotten some value again as relics?
gosub100 2y ago
remember when they tried to codify it into an international treaty, effectively removing even congress' ability to control it?
Uehreka 2y ago
Copyright law isn’t written to be reasonable. It doesn’t matter if the rightsholder wrote a song 65 years ago and hasn’t made money selling it for decades, it’s protected for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. I’m sure everyone who comments on this would agree that’s far too long, but it doesn’t matter what we think. We could spend all day coming up with better ideas for how this could work, but the RIAA have no desire to budge on this at all, and there isn’t enough political will to overturn the current laws (all republicans and some democrats would oppose any attempt to do so).

by dfxm12 2y ago

Retric 2y ago

IMO copyright simply isn’t fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1 copies after 20 years isn’t economically meaningful to the creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it’s co opting the original creator as if they where endorsing what you’re doing. Which simply isn’t appropriate while the creator is alive. On the other hand if you’re selling action figures you expect little kids to create their own stories with those characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes, fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren’t obvious.

redundantly 2y ago
Your distinction between commercial use and things like meme culture doesn’t hold up. For example, memes can harm creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-right groups. If you want to protect creators, there’s no simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
- Retric 2y ago
  Focused on “commercial” and while ignoring “political campaign, etc” misses the point. There is a difference between making up a new Chuck Norris fact and using the meme to support religion, brands, politics, or whatever. Legal systems constantly deal with intangible abstracts like intent. “Pepe the Frog being co-opted” is cashing in on the existing work rather than operating in some hypothetical framework.
  - redundantly 2y ago
    Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA. Beyond that, creative works shape society, and arbitrarily restricting them stifles creativity. Granting exceptions for reasons like ‘think of the children’ or ‘it’s just for the lulz’ fails to address the greater issue.
    - Retric 2y ago
      > Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA. Being ‘Official’ is irrelevant. Noting happens without individuals doing something, who would then be liable in the system I am describing. > Granting exceptions for Exceptions completely defeat the point here. It’s the implied support that’s the problem not what’s being supported. Someone could be a well known champion of the issuing being supported, but disagree with being associated with the people presenting the message. We limit what you can do with someone’s likeness and someone’s works deserve protection for similar reasons. Under the current system this issue is irrelevant because of how long copyright lasts, but if you want dramatically shorter copyright people are going to want this kind of protection even for works they aren’t receiving royalties from.
idle_zealot 2y ago
I agree that we're probably giving up something culturally and socially important by restricting the telling and remixing of stories, myths, characters, etc. As for co-opting work to spread a message the author wouldn't necessarily endorse, that interpretation sounds like one borne of a world with strict copyright that has trained people to expect all instances of a character or uses of a work to involve the author's permission. In a world without such an expectation that sort of usage would not be misinterpreted as endorsement.
- Retric 2y ago
  > In a world without such an expectation that sort of usage would not be misinterpreted as endorsement. Memory is associative not some perfectly indexed logical deduction. Play a clip of something next to something else and people link them even if it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not such a big issue of someone is using characters from a novel in a new context, but we’re also dealing with recordings and deepfakes. Make a minor edit to a song and play it in a commercial and many people would get confused as to what the original lyrics where.
- LocalH 2y ago
  > that interpretation sounds like one borne of a world with strict copyright that has trained people to expect all instances of a character or uses of a work to involve the author's permission I think rather it's borne of a world that views ideas as something to own, rather than something that you give to the world to enrich culture, arts, or sciences. There are people who desire perpetual copyright, and the eradication of the public domain. They see ideas as something they have a right to monetize until the end of time.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Ideas and recordings of performances are separate things. Someone may want to abolish copyright on books and still desire control over a sex tape they made 50 years ago.

squarefoot 2y ago

> The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. So they could have gotten some value again as relics?

gosub100 2y ago

remember when they tried to codify it into an international treaty, effectively removing even congress' ability to control it?

Uehreka 2y ago

Copyright law isn’t written to be reasonable. It doesn’t matter if the rightsholder wrote a song 65 years ago and hasn’t made money selling it for decades, it’s protected for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. I’m sure everyone who comments on this would agree that’s far too long, but it doesn’t matter what we think. We could spend all day coming up with better ideas for how this could work, but the RIAA have no desire to budge on this at all, and there isn’t enough political will to overturn the current laws (all republicans and some democrats would oppose any attempt to do so).