Public Domain

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Then tax it like any other property. Let the government seize it if the taxes aren't paid. Or is that too difficult. . .

Are you under the impression that profits aren’t taxed for works of fiction already?

[leebase]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I disregard that argument.

The constitution says "[the United States Congress shall have power] 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."

The only argument to me is how long that time is.

That’s the law as it is now. I’m proposing a change

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by leebase

Are you under the impression that profits aren’t taxed for works of fiction already?

Not the profits - the property. A piece of land is taxed, whether or not any income is received from it.

If you want perpetual copyright, it ought to be taxed the same way - over and above any income.

[leebase]

Not all property is treated like land. I’d be content with the income tax against income earned by fiction

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by leebase

Not all property is treated like land. I’d be content with the income tax against income earned by fiction

I'm sure you would. But if you want it treated like real property (perpetual( it should be taxed like real property.

Land is perpetual. Most other things eventually wear out.

I don't believe in a untaxed perpetual monopoly. That is what you are asking for.

[leebase]

Cash is real property. Bonds and stocks are real property. Gold and jewels are real property. Pieces of art are real property. All are subjected to income and estate taxes.

How would one value a story to tax it? Is a story written by an Indie and we

A only a few hundred copies to be taxed the same as a Steven King novel? Much better to tax on the income the stories bring...just like art, gold and the like

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

I would argue that copyrights are inherently bad. They create friction where none is needed. The only redeeming quality of copyright is that it keeps creators from being robbed of the fruit of their labors the second after they create it. And our society has deemed that important enough to protect.

Exactly!

[Raphi'Elohim]

Originally Posted by Ricky D'Angelo

IMHO, more books should be in the public domain. According to the following source works up to 1923 are currently in public domain in the US.

https://law.duke.edu/cspd/

I know it's not as simple as picking an arbitrary year but perhaps all books up to 1950 should be in public domain. To argue otherwise seems to be more in the interest of censorship (i.e., making books less readily available) rather than profits. Thoughts?

IMHO, it does not really matter all that much. Modern books are usually better than older ones. This is partly because modern books benefit from more up-to-date knowledge (though, they don't always), and partly because the publishing business is now very competitive, unlike in earlier days, years, or centuries; and competition means the best will generally rise to the top (i.e., get published). A great many older books ('classics') are much overpraised, but it took me a long time to figure out that it was the books which were lousy, and not my taste.

This does not necessarily apply to philosophy as much, though. Philosophy like science deals with truth that can happen anytime and any place (they are not chronotopic) but their methods are different. They also both currently use specialized nomenclature that keeps the layman out because it speeds up communication within their niche of people. Modern philosophy has taken a huge step backwards, though

The genius Stephen Hawking (RIP) in his book "The Grand Design" said that philosophy has failed to keep up with science so it is now obsolete (I realize that is controversial statement but bears consideration since he was a genius).

Project Gutenberg has Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein etc.. that is good enough for me. I don't need Sartre's existentialism. I think the modern founder genetics/dna James Watson said it best. He told an interviewer he was an Atheist. He told the interviewer that he doesn't think we are here for anything but just accidents of evolution. The interviewer asked him what his reason for living was. He said "I am anticipating a good lunch" (paraphrase) That latter statement demolishes Sartre's fanciful existentialism.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ok, I tell you this. At the death of anybody, all of their assets are dissolved and given to the government. No? Why not? Yes? You b@stard

Why should the work of an artist be given to public domain and not the work of an investment banker or ship builder, cattleman or land baron.

Because the work of an artist is not property any more than programs that I write are my property. You can call them "intellectual property" but that doesn't make them property.

The whole copyright as property is a very new concept, one that was not recognized for the some 2500 years that we have had literary works. Physical property laws have been recognized for just as long.

The Library of Alexandria was build by scribes making copies (and giving the copies back rather than the original) of every scroll they could get their hands on.

It takes a little more than a simple assertion to over come all that history. There are very good reasons that literary works have not been treated as property through all of history, yet buildings and money have. It's basically impossible to prevent someone from making a copy of a book. It's impossible to keep story tellers from telling stories that they hear. Through most of history, the very idea that one would want to do these things would have been considered madness. The shared stories are what binds a society together.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Premise....copyright is a good thing. Without that premise, nothing else works.

I disagree with the premise, and your conclusion.
"Promoting the progress of science and useful arts" is a good thing.
Limited time copyright is a means to achieve that. It is not a good thing in and of itself.

[leebase]

We learn and improve from history. Clearly intellectual property is real, there is real value. That's WHY certain people don't want copyright at all, or only limited.

They want free stuff. Why pay for a book....it should be free.

They want to benefit financially from someone else's work. Why write your own stories when you can make a movie based on the excellent story someone else wrote. But having made the movie, the new person wants to own the merchandizing rights to their version of the characters.

Intellectual property wouldn't have value if there weren't patents and copyrights....true. It has to be clear, though, that IP has been a hugely positive societal force.

[ekbell]

Copyright started as a means to reduce competition for publishers, the first to claim a manuscript in the local area(hopefully by buying it from the author) had dibs, which was attached to the author when it was realized that author's rights would gain more support then publisher's rights.

Or so I gathered from Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenburg to Gates

Now I do think that it's better for society that some authors no longer need an independent source of money or to be tied to patrons (plenty still are of course).

This said I'm not sure that I need or indeed should be able to profit off of my remote ancestors' work in such a direct fashion. I am not the one who put in the work and I would be only one of a large number of people who could claim ancestry (I come from large families on both sides).

[The previous assumes that I have an ancestor that a)produced something of lasting value that was b)not sold off, c) not diluted and rendered near valueless by the sheer numbers of heirs needing to agree or d)inherited by someone else in order to keep the property intact by not having too many heirs to make any decisions.]

And on society's side stories are important as being a large part of what makes one society distinct from another and being a large part of the inculturation of values. The monopoly of stories while good for publishers (and hopefully authors) does influence the spread of values and shapes society in a particular fashion. The way stories, such as The Little Mermaid, are retold both reflects and transforms their societal influence in ways that can be greatly influential. Simply by having the little mermaid's attempt to have a upper class stranger love and marry her succeed dramatically changes the original author's message for better or worse. The fact that both variants are around provides a clear basis for discussions on how our stories reflect both ourselves and our societies in a way that can be understood by even younger children. Just collecting different versions of the same Aesop's fables and the different morals that they give is useful in this area. Having the children retell these out of copyright tales in their own words is also a very useful teaching technique.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

We learn and improve from history. Clearly intellectual property is real, there is real value. That's WHY certain people don't want copyright at all, or only limited.

They want free stuff. Why pay for a book....it should be free.

They want to benefit financially from someone else's work. Why write your own stories when you can make a movie based on the excellent story someone else wrote. But having made the movie, the new person wants to own the merchandizing rights to their version of the characters.

Intellectual property wouldn't have value if there weren't patents and copyrights....true. It has to be clear, though, that IP has been a hugely positive societal force.

And you keep not answering the question, but instead moving to emotional declarations. Anyone who doesn't buy in to eternal copyright just wants free stuff. That is, of course, a red herring. Sure, some people do want free stuff, but there are plenty of people who keep pointing out what society gets out of public domain.

Intellectual property isn't real. It's simply a catch phrase, a PR ploy. What is real is that creative efforts have value to society, but a large part of that value is how other people can build on them. That's the whole point of public domain. Without PD, very little gets improved. Mobile phones would still be a novelty rather than the modern smart phone.

So how to reward creative efforts? Historically, they were paid either by patrons, performance fees or commission. Shakespeare didn't live off the royalties from his works, rather he was part of an acting company. While some of his plays were published during his lifetime, most of them weren't published until after his death. Certainly, they could have come up with a system where artists were paid a salary to produce works rather than copyright. Some countries have had systems like that. The British used a variation of their copyright system (which were assigned to printing companies rather than the actual authors of the works) to reward artists. Copyright has always been a government granted monopoly rather than true property.

[leebase]

Nobody has put forth the societal good of fiction. I have distinguished fiction from inventions, medicines and the like where there is a societal good.

Nobody needs public domain fiction. There is no limit to the imagination. Can’t copy Superman? Then write about Fantastic man! Or Super Woman. Or Alien baby man. Better yet, come up with more original story and move fiction forward.

You can write Macbeth today....actual Macbeth. But so many stories and movies are actually Macbeth anyway....in ways that would still be ok if the Shakespeare estate had an infinite copyright.

There is no harm to society whatsoever to not be able to plunder the rights of artists. There is clearly a harm to be had for the rights holders.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ekbell

Copyright started as a means to reduce competition for publishers, the first to claim a manuscript in the local area(hopefully by buying it from the author) had dibs, which was attached to the author when it was realized that author's rights would gain more support then publisher's rights.

Or so I gathered from Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenburg to Gates

.

There are a couple books on IP and copyright that I find interesting. One is "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars" by William Patry, another is "Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle. Boyle is a law professor specializing in IP at Duke and one of the founders of the Creative Commons. Patry is also a copyright lawyer and at one time was the senior copyright lawyer at Google. Both well written books and worth reading.