6 ms·

A tiny victory. Copyright should not be more than a decade. This intellectual property system is one of the worst things to happen in modern society is what I w

• f1shy 7mo ago
  Leave it in 2, like patents. Even 3 could be tolerated. But current standard is crap.
• ronsor 7mo ago
  The reason copyright doesn't get fixed or removed is largely because the general public is worried more about other things and the big rightsholders continue their monthly payments—err, lobbying. Though AI might change that. In the end, large corporations get what they want.
  • thmsths 7mo ago
    The general public also get sold on the rosy idea that copyright (and patents to a certain extent), protect the little guy, that thanks to this mechanism their work will not be stolen by opportunistic freeloaders. It also resonates with the "one day I will strike rich" mentality. What they usually "forget" to tell you is that your IP is absolutely worthless if you don't have the resources to defend it in court, which in turns actually advantages freeloaders who either have relatively low costs to sue (patent trolls are basically an example of this) or enough money that they don't feel the pain if they lose. The current system basically incentivizes suing over IP NOT creating it.
    • bit-anarchist 7mo ago
      To add to the list of things that they "forget" to tell you, is that the real origin of copyright is fundamentally tied to censorship as well [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright Overall, IP seem to be a massive mistake.
    • damnitbuilds 7mo ago
      Also: almost no works make any money at all after 5 years. Copyright terms longer than a reasonable 5 years are only benefitting Disney and the other big copyright cartels. They are not serving the purpose of copyright: To encourage creation.
• Covzire 7mo ago
  IANAL but it seems to have major implications beyond music piracy, like into the realm of ISPs and free speech in general, it seems the court (rightly) sees ISPs as a common carrier (like water pipes) and we may see more opinions of the kind that reach into the space of monopolies or duopolies in social media next.
  • bushbaba 7mo ago
    Big tech should loose its safe harbor protection. It’s both an aggregator AND a curator. The algorithms showing you what to see is no different than a newspaper editor. Just like newspapers big tech should be liable for their “feeds” showing harmful and defamatory information
    • Covzire 7mo ago
      I would be happy if congress passed a law saying a social media has no liability for anything their users post as long as the algorithm is completely open source. If we had social media like that, they'd even have APIs that let users design their own algorithm and we'd see a golden age of social media emerge from it. Twitter seems to moving in this direction but they enjoy no legal protections from being open at the moment. Blusky is already this way I believe, but without a neutral and trusted centralized control it's a bit different of an animal.
    • elpool2 7mo ago
      I don’t see how it would ever make sense to hold social media liable for user posted defamation. Look at the recent Afroman defamation lawsuit and consider how YouTube is supposed to know whether that music video was defamatory or not. It took a court 3 years to reach a conclusion but you want YouTube to make that same call instantly, on millions of posts a day. What you’d get is a world where Afroman’s (non defamatory) speech basically cannot be shared on social media at all.
      • ryandrake 7mo ago
        I think the difference should be whether they are a dumb pipe, or whether they exercise editorial control and/or promote some content over others. If you are truly a dumb pipe, that just transmits whatever the users post, then you shouldn't be liable for what goes over your wires. Like the phone company. As soon as you start acting as an editor: amplifying some content and downplaying (or removing) other content, re-ordering it, ranking it, and so on, then you are placing your name on the content and in a sense should share liability around it. Companies should have to deliberately decide who they are going to be: are they just wires like the phone company, or are they a newspaper's letters-to-the-editor department? They shouldn't be able to act like one, but have the liability of the other.
• mannyv 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • izacus 7mo ago
    Because it sounds like a nice round reasonable number. Like many others in the law. Now stop being a clown.
  • stavros 7mo ago
    > If you made anything that was worth protecting you might feel differently. How do you know they didn't? Oh, because of the No True Scotsman of "no person who truly made something worth protecting can have this opinion". As if none of us have released anything under an MIT license. Ridiculous.
  • applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
    Why do we send X person to prison for 5 years, and not 4 years, or 6 years? Clearly the only rational choices are life sentence or no prison time. Or, why protect it for 70 years? Why not 69 years? Why not 68 years? etc. Such a useless argument in every way.
  • wat10000 7mo ago
    I think I've made plenty and I don't feel differently. You could ask the same questions about the actual duration of copyrights as they are today. You present those rhetorical questions as if they were some argument against this proposal, but they're just things you need to think about regardless of what scheme you come up with: why this, and why not something else? It's not like "life of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from creation" is any less arbitrary. We should remember that the purpose of intellectual property laws in the US is explicitly, per the US Constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...." The purpose is not to ensure that creators can keep collecting money decades after they created their works. It may be useful to ensure that as a way to promote progress, but it's just a tool, not the goal. If progress is better promoted with a 10-minute copyright term then we should do that instead.
  • prepend 7mo ago
• xoa 7mo ago
  I'm not sure I agree that any single fixed term makes sense. Rather, I think it'd be better if the exponential cost to society (in terms of works that don't happen, and works that don't happen based on those works that didn't happen and so on compounding) was just part of the yearly renewal price. Do maybe everyone gets 7 years flat to start with, then it costs $100*1.3^(year). So after another 25 years it'd be around $70.5k renewal. At 50 years it'd be $50 million. At 75 years it'd be $35 billion. Fixed amount and exponential can of course be shifted around here but the idea would be to encourage creators to use works hard and if they couldn't make it work not sit on them but release them. Once in awhile something would be such a big hit it'd be worth keeping a long time, and that's ok, but society gets its due too. And most works would be allowed to lapse as they stopped being worth it. Another alternative/additional approach would be to split up the nature of copyright, vs an all or nothing total monopoly. Let there be 7-10 years of total copyright, then another 7-14 years where no exclusivity of where it's sold or DRM is allowed, then 7/14/21 years where royalties can still be had but licensing is mandatory at FRAND rates, then finally some period of "creditright" where the creator has no control or licensing, but if they wish can still require any derivative works to give them a spot in the credits. I think there is a lot of unexplored territory for IP, and wish the conversations were less binary.
  • calvinmorrison 7mo ago
    How about something like IP as a tax? IE: if you make profit off of it, then it cranks up. There's plenty of music artists who's song blow up a decade or more later.
    • xoa 7mo ago
      I want to be super clear that I'm not proposing some finalized plan or numbers here, it'd need some real work spent hashing it all out. Mainly though I hope people will consider more the huge space of untapped approaches to balancing various benefits and costs towards a better societal outcome. And that maybe that helps a little in getting us out of some of the present seemingly intractable boxes we so often seem stuck in? Your tax idea could certainly be another useful tool. My main immediate thought/caution would be: >IE: if you make profit off of it, then it cranks up. There's plenty of music artists who's song blow up a decade or more later. As we have endless examples of, "profit" and even "revenue" can be subject to a lot of manipulation/fudging given the right incentives. I also think that part of the cost I describe is objective: whether it takes off right away or takes off after a decade, as long as it's under full copyright it's imposing a cost on society the whole time. Also other stuff like risk of it getting lost/destroyed. So I do think there needs to be some counter to that in the system, sitting on something, even if it makes no money, shouldn't be free. But the graduated approach might help with this too, and again they could be mixed and matched. It could be 1001.3^n to keep full copyright, but only 501.2^n to maintain "licenseright", 25*1.15^n for "FRANDright", and free for the remaining period of "creditright". Or whatever, play around with numbers and consider different outcomes. But feels like there's room for improvement over the present state of affairs.
• autoexec 7mo ago
  I agree with you that 10 years is more than enough time for corporations to turn a healthy profit on something (not that they can't continue to make money off of a work after it has entered the public domain), but this wasn't a small victory. If every ISP were at risk of being on the hook for endless billions in damages because of what their users did it would mean that ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy. It's worth noting that cox was actually already doing this in a limited number of circumstances, and the media industry still wasn't satisfied. The media industry insisted that they needed the power to get people's accounts terminated even though it would have left many people, including fully innocent ones, cut off from the internet entirely. This was a big deal, and I'm honestly surprised to see this supreme court do the right thing.
  • chii 7mo ago
    > ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy. and this is already true today, except instead of being ISPs, it's youtube and other user generated content platforms.
    • autoexec 7mo ago
      Youtube was strong armed into agreeing to that by the RIAA to an extent. They could absolutely do better though by including human oversight and/or including it earlier in the process. Google has enough money that they can easily afford to pay workers to do the job and not screw over their users through their broken copyright system, but they choose not to.
• pjc50 7mo ago
  At this stage I just want a coherent system. There is no way "individuals can have their accounts terminated for one song" and "AI companies can download a complete copy of everything, including pirated works, and roll it into models which can reproduce it exactly and sell it back to you" should be able to co-exist.
• jMyles 7mo ago
  > now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad. I'm not so sure they're unrelated. The bondage of intellectual property forces very particular branches of human development to the exclusion of others. It's no surprise that restriction of thought and creativity - and most of all, music - is to be found alongside war and predation and uninspired leadership.
• raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • RiverCrochet 7mo ago
    The constitutionally defined purpose of copyright is: "... 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." I don't understand how "person X created this so anyone who does something similar has to pay him and his kin for all eternity" promotes progress. In fact, it does the exact opposite - at some point you can't do or say anything through any persistent media without paying legions of lawyers, trusts, and corporate entities.
    • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
      You could always create something on your own instead…
      • RiverCrochet 7mo ago
        Incorrect. If everyone who creates something has a claim on it for eternity, eventually creating something will be impossible.
  • Dylan16807 7mo ago
    Because we live in a society. New versions of ideas should be available to all of us after a certain amount of time. And I can equally ask why you think others should have the right to control you and stop you from imitating them.
    • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
      If I can’t come up with a new idea, I don’t deserve to make money from someone else’s
      • 7mo ago
• jonathanstrange 7mo ago
  I think it should be for a lifetime of the original author and non-transferable. The system is already rigged very much against artists, it's amazing how many people still contribute to culture under the given conditions. I don't see any reason why someone who writes a Christmas song or a novel shouldn't have a possibility to get payments for their works until they die, for example. However, I have a lot of problems with the bizarre extensions that companies and heirs have gotten for work they haven't created on their own.
  • chii 7mo ago
    > non-transferable so you can't create works for hire than?
    • Planktonne 7mo ago
      You could, you'd just license them at creation time for X years. It would stop large corporations hoarding everything.
      • chii 7mo ago
        a licensing agreement is not work for hire - work for hire means the person doing the hiring owns the copyright, not the person who did the work.
        • Planktonne 7mo ago
          That's how it works now, but we're talking about changing it. That's the context of the conversation.
• MattGrommes 7mo ago
  In a world where copyright only lasts 10 years, what happens to the musician whose song from 20 years ago is used in a movie and becomes super popular? Do they get royalties or are there no royalties involved? I want a system that doesn't syphon money to the corporations over the individual creator and the corporations can't tell me I can't use the song.
  • mkl 7mo ago
    No royalties, as the 20-year-old song would be in the public domain, so no one can tell anyone they can't use the song. The vast majority of songs that make a profit will do so within the first few years, with almost or actually nothing after 10 years. The copyright system should optimise for public benefit and the vast majority of works, rather than the tiny number of big successes.
• MoonWalk 7mo ago
  Disagree on the decade. There are plenty of examples of great movies or other works that took longer than a decade to bring to the public. Those projects would have been completely non-viable if their content could have been stolen after creators put a decade into their development. I think 25 or even 50 years is more defensible. But 100? Nah. But the crushing problem today for many of us here is SOFTWARE PATENTS. These should never have been allowed in the first place; and until their scourge is abolished, everyone is at risk for having his work stolen with one.
  • dawnerd 7mo ago
    We should do a split system where its like life of artist or 25 years, whichever is longer. Seems like a good balance for the artists estate too.
    • bombcar 7mo ago
      The usual way to do that is to have renewals or other periods; then things that are abandoned fall out of copyright, but things that the author is alive to protect remain in. It's moderately hard to build a law based on what people think is "fair" mainly because fairness often has more to do with feelings (it would be fair for someone to make a Hobbit movie because the author is long dead; it would be unfair for someone to make a Potter movie because the author is alive, etc) than with an easily quantifiable rule. I've often thought the solution is to define copyright (of things published, not trade secrets and unpublished works) as being something that can ONLY be defended as long as the work is "available" in the marketplace for "reasonable" amounts. As long as Warner Bros or whoever it is keeps selling the Lord of the Rings (extended edition) on DVD or whatever, they can j'accuse infringers of downloading it. But ten years after it's no longer in print? No longer in copyright, either.
  • MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
    What about 10 years, then compulsory licensing goes into effect for any remaining duration and renewal?
  • robhlt 7mo ago
• tgv 7mo ago
  I'm not sure that's the correct approach. Why do you want to have free access to other people's books, movies, and songs in the first place? I have the feeling that's not the case, but what is it then?
• giancarlostoro 7mo ago
  I think for Music / Movies / Shows, sure, for Software? Probably not so simple.
  • bombcar 7mo ago
    Some would argue software shouldn't be copyrightable at all. And their arguments aren't entirely without merit, either. Hard to make them on a site dedicated to selling software and its byproducts, perhaps.
    • giancarlostoro 7mo ago
      Copyright is what gives licenses like the GPL teeth against people who violate it though. I would argue abandonware should be fair game. If the company in question is gone or not maintaining the software, it should be 100% considered public domain.
• snowwrestler 7mo ago
  If copyright was only a decade then Sony could have waited 5 more years and made the movie of Project Hail Mary without paying one dime to Andy Weir. I think the law is too long now, but a decade is too short to protect artists. Even a patent is 20 years.
  • spongebobstoes 7mo ago
    probably someone else would have made the movie instead. there is time value to money. money now is better than money in 5 years
  • chii 7mo ago
    > made the movie of Project Hail Mary without paying one dime to Andy Weir. and is there anything really wrong with that? I personally would have liked to see fan made movies of various IPs like star wars, and harry potter, but it is impossible due to the long reach of copyright infringement.
  • globular-toast 7mo ago
    Maybe that would encourage writers to actually make best use of the book medium as opposed to Andy Weir which is basically a film script with a cover on it.