MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Notes on a more rational copyright system

tirsales · 06-09-2008, 04:28 PM

The difference between a patent and a copyright?

a) if you have a patent on some special system I am not allowed to copy (even modified) it in my own design - if you have copyrights e.g. on a story, I can easily publish another very likely story.
b) what can be protected. You dont have an automatic patent - because a patent is reaching quite a long way farer then any copyright.

Okay, let's please leave all comparisons to patents out of the game - patents are something destructive (at least in the way they are used nowadays) and patents on something "non well-defined in a technical sense" (e.g. software, a book, etc) would be the end of the world.

What you propose, if I understood correctly, is, that you have to register your work to gain copyright for it, correct? And then pay money for keeping the copyright?
This would - ultimately - help only one group: The rich and big publishers. I dont know many free journalists or authors who could pay their copyright-licenses (or even had the time to register, etc) - but all those big corporations have the time. So they would just buy the complete copyright from the creatives, making them an even more abused group then they are nowadays.

I am all for shortening the copyright-length (death+75 years in Germany) to something sensibel. And I can see the problem with "orphaned" work ... and society has to work on it. It should e.g. be easy for an author to place his work under a creative license, or publish his work with an automatic "copyright ending time", etc. Oh well, I have no solution for this...
A registration - easy and cheap could be a start - but it really would need to be easy. Then you could shorten the copyright to 5 years and let the creative re-register copyright 5 times (or so) for free, and afterwards let the copyright become expensive (or so). I dont know ...
But - lets say you shorten copyright to 15 years. What do you think will happen? Exactly, e.g. films will get published 15 years after the books - making Hollywood more profit, and denying it to the authors.

06-09-2008, 04:28 PM	#20
tirsales MIA ... but returning som Posts: 1,600 Karma: 511342 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Germany Device: PRS-505 and Really not owning a PRS-700	The difference between a patent and a copyright? a) if you have a patent on some special system I am not allowed to copy (even modified) it in my own design - if you have copyrights e.g. on a story, I can easily publish another very likely story. b) what can be protected. You dont have an automatic patent - because a patent is reaching quite a long way farer then any copyright. Okay, let's please leave all comparisons to patents out of the game - patents are something destructive (at least in the way they are used nowadays) and patents on something "non well-defined in a technical sense" (e.g. software, a book, etc) would be the end of the world. What you propose, if I understood correctly, is, that you have to register your work to gain copyright for it, correct? And then pay money for keeping the copyright? This would - ultimately - help only one group: The rich and big publishers. I dont know many free journalists or authors who could pay their copyright-licenses (or even had the time to register, etc) - but all those big corporations have the time. So they would just buy the complete copyright from the creatives, making them an even more abused group then they are nowadays. I am all for shortening the copyright-length (death+75 years in Germany) to something sensibel. And I can see the problem with "orphaned" work ... and society has to work on it. It should e.g. be easy for an author to place his work under a creative license, or publish his work with an automatic "copyright ending time", etc. Oh well, I have no solution for this... A registration - easy and cheap could be a start - but it really would need to be easy. Then you could shorten the copyright to 5 years and let the creative re-register copyright 5 times (or so) for free, and afterwards let the copyright become expensive (or so). I dont know ... But - lets say you shorten copyright to 15 years. What do you think will happen? Exactly, e.g. films will get published 15 years after the books - making Hollywood more profit, and denying it to the authors.