Europe votes on anti-piracy laws

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Think from another POV: what if you are strongly suspected to have stolen a mafia boss's "copyrighted material" and he knows your name and address?

I think that, in that situation, we'd be in a "clean underwear required" scenario .

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Format C:

It's not so absurd: they are now putting "copyright" on living organisms...

Patents, actually, which aren't so bad in that they have a MUCH shorter lifespan.

[Ramen]

Perhaps a little more structure would be useful? I really dislike the "you said" "no, you said" discussions.

One of the main questions is, is being an author (musician/screenwriter/...) a special kind of profession or do normal job reasonings apply? This is independent of how the working conditions are enforced.

If writing is a normal job, then why should a wife receive income once the husband is dead (or vice versa)? After all, if you're a banker and you die, your wife also doesn't continue to receive your income. That's where personal wealth, possible insurances and the social system comes in.
Why should writing be an exception?

[Ramen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Patents, actually, which aren't so bad in that they have a MUCH shorter lifespan.

Except, there are entire diseases that are no longer researched because they are a patent minefield.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ramen

If writing is a normal job, then why should a wife receive income once the husband is dead (or vice versa)? After all, if you're a banker and you die, your wife also doesn't continue to receive your income. That's where personal wealth, possible insurances and the social system comes in.
Why should writing be an exception?

Nobody's saying that it should be.

A "salaried" job is an inappropriate analogy. A writer is more akin to someone who's set up their own business, and is paying a manager (the publisher) to run it for them. The author receives an income from the business, even though he doesn't actively work in the business.

Now, our business owner dies. Can his wife continue to receive income from the business? Sure - the law has no problem with company ownership being passed to your descendents. Should the author's situation be different?

[Ramen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nobody's saying that it should be.

A "salaried" job is an inappropriate analogy. A writer is more akin to someone who's set up their own business, and is paying a manager (the publisher) to run it for them. The author receives an income from the business, even though he doesn't actively work in the business.

Now, our business owner dies. Can his wife continue to receive income from the business? Sure - the law has no problem with company ownership being passed to your descendents. Should the author's situation be different?

I'm afraid that's also not entirely an appropriate analogy but it's already far better than mine.

You can inherit a company but that company still needs to continue to produce goods - in this case new books. If the company fails to do this, there will (and should) be no income because the company is effectively dead.

[HarryT]

But sales of an author's books don't just stop when he dies. They carry on; if he's a popular author, they might even increase!

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But sales of an author's books don't just stop when he dies. They carry on; if he's a popular author, they might even increase!

Yes. But is the author still writing them? Then why should he retain the copyright?

[Mambo]

In my humble opinion there is one perfectly good solution for authors to prevent other people from using their intellectual property: don not publish your stuff! Once you published it - out of your hands.

If you decide to publish it don't complain about when others are using it. Ok, not everybody will access your stuff via commercial channels, but that is part of life (some of the people will read it in a library - those are the real evel folks). We are talking about 7 000 000 000 people so what is your problem, find your customers.

Your right is not about walking around and punish everybody who is not wealthy enough (or considers himself wealthy) to buy your thing. Your right is only so much, that you have an exclusivity of selling your products. Nobody else should be able to legally sell what you have created - that's all. This is an author's reward that should be legally enforced.
Otherwise I think that knowledge and entertainment is power and whoever prevents people from accessing knowledge or entertainment or demands higher payment than a marginal sum wants to keep people in slavery and steal their freedom. Every human being was born as a free person and has the right to get into contract with you upon his free will, but you don't have the right to stop him enjoying his poor life by excluding him from the society through charging excessive amounts for information and entertainment without which nobody can actually participate in social interactions.

So taking action against pirates who actually SELL illegal copies of intelectual property - is good.

Taking action against users who share in their community for no benefit in return - is against human kind and comes from the evil no matter how nice they talk and how intelligent is their argument. These people (who support legal initiatives against people who download or share) are antidemocratic and supporters of systems of oppression to put it in a nice way. I wouldn't like to be one of them or a friend of theirs.

One day everything you do, say or think will be monitored and you can give thanks for it to those harmless "authors" who just wanted to make a living...

Yes I want to make a living too, yes I want my rights, but not at the price of total control and losing my privacy.

[Ramen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But sales of an author's books don't just stop when he dies. They carry on; if he's a popular author, they might even increase!

This is also the patent buisness model. How long do you think it fair to enforce a monopoly (without having to further "inovate" yourself)?

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But sales of an author's books don't just stop when he dies. They carry on; if he's a popular author, they might even increase!

If those books actually sell then the author's family should receive a share of the income - that's fair. However, copying of books for private purposes should also be allowed - at the same time.

[HarryT]

Why do you have this fixation that copyright has something to do with writing books? Copyright gives you (or your heirs - for 70 years, anyway) the right to control distribution of what you've already written.

There's no difference between an author dieing, and a living author simply deciding to stop writing. His books still "live on", regardless of whether he's writing any more.

Look at that woman whose name entirely escapes me at the moment who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird". She wrote that when she was young and (AFAIK) hasn't written another word since. She's lived on the income from sales of that book. By your argument, presumably she shouldn't be allowed to earn any money from it if she isn't writing any more?

[Ramen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why do you have this fixation that copyright has something to do with writing books? Copyright gives you (or your heirs - for 70 years, anyway) the right to control distribution of what you've already written.

There's no difference between an author dieing, and a living author simply deciding to stop writing. His books still "live on", regardless of whether he's writing any more.

Look at that woman whose name entirely escapes me at the moment who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird". She wrote that when she was young and (AFAIK) hasn't written another word since. She's lived on the income from sales of that book. By your argument, presumably she shouldn't be allowed to earn any money from it if she isn't writing any more?

(emphasis mine)
Not sure who you're referring to but I'm (also) a programmer so copyright is quite important to me.
Apart from that, if you think such a style is constructive then we might as well stop.

[HarryT]

I was referring to Nate's comment that:

Yes. But is the author still writing them? Then why should he retain the copyright?

This seems to imply that if you are no longer actively writing books, you should lose any rights to things that you've written previously.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why do you have this fixation that copyright has something to do with writing books? Copyright gives you (or your heirs - for 70 years, anyway) the right to control distribution of what you've already written.

There's no difference between an author dieing, and a living author simply deciding to stop writing. His books still "live on", regardless of whether he's writing any more.

Look at that woman whose name entirely escapes me at the moment who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird". She wrote that when she was young and (AFAIK) hasn't written another word since. She's lived on the income from sales of that book. By your argument, presumably she shouldn't be allowed to earn any money from it if she isn't writing any more?

Once again I ask, why is 20 year limit for patent acceptable, but 70 to 150 year limit is needed for copyright?