6 ms·

What is the jurisdiction? What counts as a unit of copyrightable work? Are we obligated to accept work copyrighted in another county or state as being copyright

What is the jurisdiction? What counts as a unit of copyrightable work? Are we obligated to accept work copyrighted in another county or state as being copyrighted in ours? If yes, what can we do about jurisdictions that set absurdly low tax rates (see race to the bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom )? I guess I should be explicit. My fear is that states will race to the bottom and charge $0.0001 per page per year which will lead to aggregation of perpetual copyright into the hands of copyright trolls. I am sorry but why does Mickey Mouse deserve perpetual protection under copyright? Why does Disney get to write our copyright laws and dictate foreign policy so much?

rayiner 12y ago
> I am sorry but why does Mickey Mouse deserve perpetual protection under copyright? Why does your grandfather's farm deserve perpetual protections as he hands it down over generations? Or put another way, why does anyone else deserve any rights over Mickey Mouse when Disney is the one that created him?
- lmm 12y ago
  Sure, what if no-one had any rights over Mickey Mouse? Everyone would be free to use him however they liked. (There are specific issues when you do that with land, but as far as I can tell none of them apply to copyright.)
  - thanksgiving 12y ago
    I agree. I shouldn't be able to sell rusty vans with the Mickey Mouse logo on them claiming that they are made by Disney. Or claim that my shitty b-grade movies were made by DisNEY (TRADEMARK)
    - lmm 12y ago
      Trademark law is largely good law that we should retain. Copyright law is largely not. Talk of "intellectual property" obfuscates the distinction.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Trademark has much more substantial free speech issues than copyright.
        thanksgiving 12y ago
        Personally, the only part of trademark I care about is impersonation. It should be illegal to claim that Google was involved in building my shitty products.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  My grandfather's farm could not be copied and distributed 1000000 times over with a few cents worth of electricity and a glass fiber. If you take my grandfather's farm, he is no longer able to use it for farming. Copyrights and patents were created specifically for the purpose of recouping development costs that are otherwise non-recoverable by the more obvious laws of microeconomics. You're not just comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing actual apples to poems that rhyme the word orange.
- nefreat 12y ago
  Because Mickey Mouse is an idea while a farm is not. Claiming ownership of metaphysical concepts like Mickey Mouse is very different from claiming ownership of something that's scarce and rivalrous such as the farm.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Actually, perpetual property rights and unclear title are a huge problem with real estate and capital formation in South America especially. See Hernando de Soto's Mystery of Capital or Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Perpetuities ultimately end up with contending claims. Adjudicating those is tremendously expensive.
- chc 12y ago
  The better question is, why does Disney deserve special rights to Mickey Mouse just because he was the first one with the idea? There is no natural right to an idea the same way there is a natural right to physical property. It's a fiction we came up with because we wanted to see creators compensated for their work. I'm all in favor of the general purpose of copyright, but ideas are inherently non-exclusive things, and any argument based on the opposite assumption is flawed on its face.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    What is a "natural right" and who decided it applies to physical property but not ideas? And why is the "natural right" based on the ease of copying something, rather than the word work necessary to bring that thing into existence in the first place? To me, it just seems like you're using the concept as a "because I say so" distinction. The go-to for people who oppose a moral basis for copyright is the ease of copying intangible versus physical goods, but to me it's a nonsense argument. The ease of copying goes to the enforceability of any monopoly on a thing--it does not go to determining the justification for granting a monopoly on a thing to begin with.
    - chc 12y ago
      I think you actually understand the philosophical basis of property and why it doesn't apply to ideas better than you're letting on here, but I'll answer this anyway. Ownership of physical property is natural because physical property is inherently rivalrous and excludable — if you take my hammer, I can't use it, and thus I need to keep my hammer in my shed if I want to have access to it when I need it. Ownership makes natural sense there. It's essential to security. Ideas are not the same way. Any number of people can think an idea, and in fact an idea becomes just as much a part of everyone who thinks it as the first person who thought it, and you literally can't take an idea back once you have shared it. Ideas are not just easy to copy, they aren't even entities that need copying. The mind is constantly taking in and assimilating ideas and creating its own. I'm not actually against copyright. I think there is a sound moral basis for it, in that otherwise an increasing number of people wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I just don't think there is a moral justification for the tortured concept of eternal copyright. Eventually, any successful idea will become so diffused throughout society that it's just an utter farce to pretend it is not part of the commons. If nothing else, infinitely decreasing the number of ideas that may be legally had is so harmful to society that it outweighs any good that could possibly come from it. In other words, even if we say "Sure, let's pretend treating ideas as property is a natural fit," the Lockean Proviso warns us against allowing them to remain property forever.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Well Disney is dead, so are you saying that all rights to restrict the use of his copyright works should also have died? The reason others are owed rights is that copyright, as with patents, is a contract between the state and the creator/inventor. Part of the deal is that creators get copyright protection in return for the eventual entry of the work in to the public domain - they pay off the demos with that promise. State doesn't owe creators of works protection naturally. If creators want to not have a limited right to exclusive use they should be allowed to give that up and then the state should exclude itself from any actions against people who copy that work. To recapitulate: if you don't want to 'buy' copyright protection with eventual movement of your work in to the public domain then you can instead have that work freely copyable - without tort - based on the ability of anyone who sees/uses it. Without ready movement of works in to the public domain the public are being ripped off, the contract is broken and the public then should consider those works copyable without the possibility of a claim of tort.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    If creators want to not have a limited right to exclusive use they should be allowed to give that up They are. All someone has to do is include in it a statement to the effect of 'I waive my copyright interest in this work and hereby donate it to the public domain.' There is no bar on voluntary placement of work into the public domain; it just doesn't happen that often because when publishers write checks to authors they're purchasing the right to exploit the work commercially. Authors could grant publishers limited licenses to do so and then stipulate that the work would fall into the public domain after a certain date, but that would result in lowered payments from publishers, plus it creates an incentive for the publisher to under-market the work or even withhold it from sale, and then publish it once it enters the public domain without paying anything in royalties. There are some publishers that make good money of just republishing historical works, even without exclusivity. Some people want a good-quality facsimile of an old book. Dover paperbacks springs to mind.

rayiner 12y ago

> I am sorry but why does Mickey Mouse deserve perpetual protection under copyright? Why does your grandfather's farm deserve perpetual protections as he hands it down over generations? Or put another way, why does anyone else deserve any rights over Mickey Mouse when Disney is the one that created him?

lmm 12y ago
Sure, what if no-one had any rights over Mickey Mouse? Everyone would be free to use him however they liked. (There are specific issues when you do that with land, but as far as I can tell none of them apply to copyright.)
- thanksgiving 12y ago
  I agree. I shouldn't be able to sell rusty vans with the Mickey Mouse logo on them claiming that they are made by Disney. Or claim that my shitty b-grade movies were made by DisNEY (TRADEMARK)
  - lmm 12y ago
    Trademark law is largely good law that we should retain. Copyright law is largely not. Talk of "intellectual property" obfuscates the distinction.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Trademark has much more substantial free speech issues than copyright.
      - thanksgiving 12y ago
        Personally, the only part of trademark I care about is impersonation. It should be illegal to claim that Google was involved in building my shitty products.
logfromblammo 12y ago
My grandfather's farm could not be copied and distributed 1000000 times over with a few cents worth of electricity and a glass fiber. If you take my grandfather's farm, he is no longer able to use it for farming. Copyrights and patents were created specifically for the purpose of recouping development costs that are otherwise non-recoverable by the more obvious laws of microeconomics. You're not just comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing actual apples to poems that rhyme the word orange.
nefreat 12y ago
Because Mickey Mouse is an idea while a farm is not. Claiming ownership of metaphysical concepts like Mickey Mouse is very different from claiming ownership of something that's scarce and rivalrous such as the farm.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Actually, perpetual property rights and unclear title are a huge problem with real estate and capital formation in South America especially. See Hernando de Soto's Mystery of Capital or Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Perpetuities ultimately end up with contending claims. Adjudicating those is tremendously expensive.
chc 12y ago
The better question is, why does Disney deserve special rights to Mickey Mouse just because he was the first one with the idea? There is no natural right to an idea the same way there is a natural right to physical property. It's a fiction we came up with because we wanted to see creators compensated for their work. I'm all in favor of the general purpose of copyright, but ideas are inherently non-exclusive things, and any argument based on the opposite assumption is flawed on its face.
- rayiner 12y ago
  What is a "natural right" and who decided it applies to physical property but not ideas? And why is the "natural right" based on the ease of copying something, rather than the word work necessary to bring that thing into existence in the first place? To me, it just seems like you're using the concept as a "because I say so" distinction. The go-to for people who oppose a moral basis for copyright is the ease of copying intangible versus physical goods, but to me it's a nonsense argument. The ease of copying goes to the enforceability of any monopoly on a thing--it does not go to determining the justification for granting a monopoly on a thing to begin with.
  - chc 12y ago
    I think you actually understand the philosophical basis of property and why it doesn't apply to ideas better than you're letting on here, but I'll answer this anyway. Ownership of physical property is natural because physical property is inherently rivalrous and excludable — if you take my hammer, I can't use it, and thus I need to keep my hammer in my shed if I want to have access to it when I need it. Ownership makes natural sense there. It's essential to security. Ideas are not the same way. Any number of people can think an idea, and in fact an idea becomes just as much a part of everyone who thinks it as the first person who thought it, and you literally can't take an idea back once you have shared it. Ideas are not just easy to copy, they aren't even entities that need copying. The mind is constantly taking in and assimilating ideas and creating its own. I'm not actually against copyright. I think there is a sound moral basis for it, in that otherwise an increasing number of people wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I just don't think there is a moral justification for the tortured concept of eternal copyright. Eventually, any successful idea will become so diffused throughout society that it's just an utter farce to pretend it is not part of the commons. If nothing else, infinitely decreasing the number of ideas that may be legally had is so harmful to society that it outweighs any good that could possibly come from it. In other words, even if we say "Sure, let's pretend treating ideas as property is a natural fit," the Lockean Proviso warns us against allowing them to remain property forever.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Well Disney is dead, so are you saying that all rights to restrict the use of his copyright works should also have died? The reason others are owed rights is that copyright, as with patents, is a contract between the state and the creator/inventor. Part of the deal is that creators get copyright protection in return for the eventual entry of the work in to the public domain - they pay off the demos with that promise. State doesn't owe creators of works protection naturally. If creators want to not have a limited right to exclusive use they should be allowed to give that up and then the state should exclude itself from any actions against people who copy that work. To recapitulate: if you don't want to 'buy' copyright protection with eventual movement of your work in to the public domain then you can instead have that work freely copyable - without tort - based on the ability of anyone who sees/uses it. Without ready movement of works in to the public domain the public are being ripped off, the contract is broken and the public then should consider those works copyable without the possibility of a claim of tort.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  If creators want to not have a limited right to exclusive use they should be allowed to give that up They are. All someone has to do is include in it a statement to the effect of 'I waive my copyright interest in this work and hereby donate it to the public domain.' There is no bar on voluntary placement of work into the public domain; it just doesn't happen that often because when publishers write checks to authors they're purchasing the right to exploit the work commercially. Authors could grant publishers limited licenses to do so and then stipulate that the work would fall into the public domain after a certain date, but that would result in lowered payments from publishers, plus it creates an incentive for the publisher to under-market the work or even withhold it from sale, and then publish it once it enters the public domain without paying anything in royalties. There are some publishers that make good money of just republishing historical works, even without exclusivity. Some people want a good-quality facsimile of an old book. Dover paperbacks springs to mind.