Free Culture

[taustin]

Originally Posted by Richey79

However, even if the main function of copyright of life +70 is to reduce competition for living authors and help them to make a living, is that really such a terrible motivation?

If that were the motivation, sure, I'd agree. But it's not, and it's certainly not the effect. The effect is to reduce competition for dead authors and help their grandchildren make a living.

The motivation is for corporations to continue to make as much money as possible for as long as possible, and reduce their costs in doing do. The longer they can sell Mickey Mouse DVDs, the longer it will be before Disney has to pay a living author to create something new.

[Catlady]

I think the best system would be something that requires copyright to be renewed periodically. Say something like an initial term of 30 years or 10 years after the death of the creator, whichever is later. Then the heirs would need to actively take steps to hold on to copyright--say they need to renew every 10 years, to a maximum of 70 years after the death of the creator.

This would most likely free up tons of the books that fall out of print and are in limbo, with murky ownership among multiple heirs, etc. But the ones that are still in print and producing income would still be eligible for copyright protection, which would keep Disney and the like happy.

[Worldwalker]

Remember one thing: as much as we might want to dream of (and imagine being) some fellow sitting on a Caribbean beach sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them and enjoying the benefits of books written by his great-great-grandfather whom he never met, the reality is that it's all about Disney.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Remember one thing: as much as we might want to dream of (and imagine being) some fellow sitting on a Caribbean beach sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them and enjoying the benefits of books written by his great-great-grandfather whom he never met, the reality is that it's all about Disney.

Copyright Duration and the Mickey Mouse Curve

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Catlady

A book that's out of print doesn't benefit the author, the author's heirs, or the public at large. To continue with the "house" analogy, it's like a perfectly good house that's sitting empty and useless.

Suppose you have an author who starts writing in his or her thirties and lives to age ninety. Those early books wouldn't become public domain until about 125 years after they were written.

Books will never be out of print again, if someone tells you otherwise, they are trying to sell you something.

I finished that free culture book on the train this morning, It's sick that we have allowed those media conglomerates such a stranglehold over the culture. The more I read, the more I view piracy as a natural right.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I finished that free culture book on the train this morning, It's sick that we have allowed those media conglomerates such a stranglehold over the culture. The more I read, the more I view piracy as a natural right.

If you're looking for more, Lessig's Remix is something of a sequel to it, and Boyle's The Public Domain: Enclosing the commons of the mind is an exploration of the legal background of copyright.

My favorite bit from The Public Domain (emphasis added):

Imagine someone walking up to you in 1950, handing you a book or a record or a movie reel, and saying “Quick! Do something the law of intellectual property might forbid.” …You would have been hard-pressed to do so. Perhaps you could find a balky mimeograph machine, or press a reel-to-reel tape recorder into use. You might manage a single unauthorized showing of the movie—though to how many people? But triggering the law of intellectual property would be genuinely difficult. Like an antitank mine, it would not be triggered by the footsteps of individuals. It was reserved for bigger game.

This was no accident. The law of intellectual property placed its triggers at the point where commercial activity by competitors could undercut the exploitation of markets by the rights holder. Copying, performance, distribution—these were things done by other industrial entities who were in competition with the owner of the rights: other publishers, movie theaters, distributors, manufacturers. In practice, if not theory, the law was predominantly a form of horizontal industry regulation of unfair competition—made by the people in the affected industries for the people in the affected industries. The latter point is worth stressing.

[Giggleton]

I read Boyle's "Public Domain" I read all those things spellbanisher listed in another thread. This was my favorite part from the Public Domain, it feels apropos I think.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

I'll probably read the rest of Lessig's books. I read that he's working on getting rid of corruption in our political systems now,

[Murine Press]

Actually, copyright has to be renewed. Works that were published after 1923 and before ~1945, depending on the time of the author's death has to be renewed.there are plenty of works free to be reprinted and/or republished that seemingly under copyright but were originally published after 1923.
Andras (author of the book the public domain publishing bible)

Originally Posted by Catlady

I think the best system would be something that requires copyright to be renewed periodically. Say something like an initial term of 30 years or 10 years after the death of the creator, whichever is later. Then the heirs would need to actively take steps to hold on to copyright--say they need to renew every 10 years, to a maximum of 70 years after the death of the creator.

This would most likely free up tons of the books that fall out of print and are in limbo, with murky ownership among multiple heirs, etc. But the ones that are still in print and producing income would still be eligible for copyright protection, which would keep Disney and the like happy.

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Someone who works for a living, and then retires with a pension - when they finally die the money stops.

Why should an author/artist have a continuing money-stream after they are, also, dead?

But many people set up businesses that continue to provide family employment/income for generations.

Should Ford have shut down when Henry Ford died?

Should music by Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison and Harry Chapin all be free because they are dead? Nothing for their families?

I do agree copyright shouldn't go on forever, but I don't think it should stop at their death. I like the 50 year idea.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

Should Ford have shut down when Henry Ford died?

Should the Ford heirs continue to get paid every time a early Model T changes hands?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by TGS

Should the Ford heirs continue to get paid every time a early Model T changes hands?

Who's that draped over Harry T ?

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

Should Ford have shut down when Henry Ford died?

Books are not cars.

All else aside, including arguments about first sale, resales, etc., there's one huge difference which puts books (and anything else we can label "intellectual property") into a category all its own: exclusion.

Nobody has an infinite monopoly on anything. At least, we try to keep them from having one -- there are plenty of laws against it, however badly enforced they sometimes are. Even if the Selden patent had been upheld, there was still a 17-year limitation; after that, anyone who wanted to make a car could. Copyrights on books are essentially patents on words. If someone ... say, the Mitchell estate ... holds a copyright on a certain book, nobody else can publish anything that the copyright-owner's lawyer can prove is infringing -- say, The Wind Done Gone (which I really wish had gotten beyond the "no injunction, you two work it out" stage and a secret settlement). Ford can't just say "all your cars are belong to us"; they have to keep making better cars. But someone who writes a book doesn't have to keep making better books; they have that book, and anything close to that book. That's why the monopoly has to end: without such an end, eventually there would be a "draw death" of literature, where some future Shakespeare couldn't write Romeo and Juliet because some past William Painter had already locked that concept down forever. So just as patents are limited monopolies, so are copyrights. Or they should be ... except for the efforts of Disney.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

I must confess to a certain ambivalence about the copywright situation.

I too want to read every book for free, but no income = no (professional) writers, for a start (apart from committed souls in a garrett, naturally) which would be a, well, difficult state of affairs.

I would like to be able to see no reason why the rights to income from a book, fiction or non, should extend beyond the life of the creator.
But we then are confonted by the argument that the writer's estate, i.e. family, or trust, should continue to profit - in the very same way as a building's rent, a painting's reproduction, performances of a play, a new plant, a medical breakthrough, an inventor's patent........

When I look at that lot, I find it very difficult to say that the written word, in book/novel form, is any different.

Except the terms allowed for patents, even wonderful medical breakthroughs, are a small fraction of the terms for copyright.

So yeah, "why should they be any different" is a very good question.

[spellbanisher]

I think this is a good article as to why the laws we apply to physical property should not be the same as the laws we apply to digital property:

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/958

Here is an excerpt (actually, it is about half the article).

"Real property is scarce and rivalrous: it cannot be created anew, and only a limited number of people can occupy and use a space at any one time. Copyrighted works are neither scarce nor rivalrous: books are created anew, by specific authors, and can be read by five million people as easily as by five dozen, depriving none of them, nor the author, of the ability to use the work.

These aspects make very real differences. Helprin’s analogy calls up the mental image of a landowner’s descendents being kicked off of the land 70 years after the owner’s death. Of course, that’s not how real property works. The landowner has rights in the land because she bought it from someone or inherited it—she didn’t create it. When she passes it on to her descendants, they become the new owners with as many rights in it as she had, since they as well acquired this bit of limited, rivalrous resource in much the same way as she did. But compare this to Helprin’s books going to the public domain (some 90-100 years from now). By contrast, Helprin’s descendants own the right to the works only insofar as he had a right to them in the first place—as their creator. They aren’t the authors, the people who made the work exist. Nor, should someone else decide to publish or adapt a novel, are they deprived of the right to do the same.

This is not a mere recitation of “the state giveth, and the state taketh away.” Copyright requires that a work have been published: ideas and their expression are only valuable in their transmission, whereas physical property, whether land or objects, can have inherent value. Thus, a whole different set of public issues are at stake here, including fundamental precepts of culture and free speech.

Unlike land or chattels, words are free for use and infinite, and so are their combinations. Copyright law, in order to incentivize and occasionally enrich authors, restricts some uses of words—restricts speech!—so that authors may profit. Restriction of speech is a drastic step to take, and we (and I) take it gladly—for a limited time.

Copyrighted works are distributed and used by people; they become part of our selves and our minds and our culture. Revisiting, adapting, and rewriting these works allows us to explore and examine the works and ourselves in ways that criticism alone cannot.

Copyright is not an end in itself, unlike life and liberty. From a very basic standpoint, we can see how physical property is necessary to support life, and how ownership of that physical property (my food, my shelter) is essential to liberty. Copyright, on the other hand, could be abolished without loss of life or liberty. "